Aaron Caughey

Aaron B. Caughey, M.D., Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in Residence in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Caughey earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He completed his residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Massachusetts General Hospital combined program and completed a fellowship in maternal-fetal medicine at UCSF. He then earned an M.P.H with a focus on epidemiology and a Ph.D. focused in health economics at UC, Berkeley. Dr. Caughey was also a UCSF Women’s Reproductive Health Research Clinical Scholar from 2002-2007 and is the medical director for the Diabetes and Pregnancy Program at UCSF. Dr. Caughey’s research interests incorporate methodology from clinical epidemiology, biostatistics, health economics, health policy, and the decision sciences to examine questions in predominantly three clinical areas: prenatal screening and diagnosis of birth defects and genetic disorders, how the management and outcomes of pregnancies at term change by week of gestation, and the risks and benefits of various modes of delivery including: spontaneous vaginal delivery, operative vaginal delivery, and cesarean delivery. Recently, his focus has been on how the week of gestation at term interacts with mode of delivery, management, and outcomes of pregnancy including induction of labor, expectant management of pregnancy, and elective cesarean delivery and demonstrated that effects of induction of labor on the risk of cesarean delivery are likely overstated by traditional epidemiologic studies. His RWJF Physician Faculty Scholars Program project is entitled: “Cesarean, Vaginal, and Operative Vaginal Delivery: Outcomes, Preferences, and Costs.” Throughout this project, he will be examining maternal preferences towards the various modes of delivery and their associated outcomes as well as costs and outcomes associated with term pregnancy management. He will ultimately incorporate these findings into decision-analytic and cost-effectiveness models to examine how various factors affect the optimal management strategy and cost-effectiveness of these various management schemes.