Epidemiologist
CDC
Dr. James Baggs is a Senior Epidemiologist, and he is currently a Data Coordinator and Analyst for the Antibiotic Resistance Coordination & Strategy Unit in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (DHQP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) . Dr. Baggs has over 20 years of experience in using large health care administrative databases to address important questions in healthcare epidemiology, pharmacoepidemiology, and workplace safety. Analyses have been conducted using data from various sources such as electronic health record databases, Medicare claims, national and state hospital discharge files, the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), MarketScan databases, hospital cost reports, laboratory reporting systems, and other health care based files. Dr. Baggs has a PhD in Epidemiology from Emory University; during his doctoral training, Dr. Baggs concentrated on studies of HIV genetic variation. He is experienced in using SAS, Python/Pyspark, and other software to conduct sophisticated analysis and data management of large databases. In 2017, Dr. Baggs accepted the position of team leader for the Data Science and Analytics team within OPRE. In 2019 and 2022, Dr. Baggs led the development of methods to estimate the burden of certain antibiotic resistance infections in the U.S. for the CDC Antibiotic Resistance Threats Report and COVID Impact Report. In 2023, Dr. Baggs moved to become a Data Coordinator and Analyst in the Science Office within the Antibiotic Resistance Coordination & Strategy Unit at the CDC. Throughout his career, Dr. Baggs has participated as a co-author on a number of peer reviewed publications involving HIV, immunization safety, healthcare-associated infections, sepsis, antibiotic resistance, antibiotic stewardship, and the use of administrative data in epidemiologic research.