Carla Rodriguez-Watson, PhD, MPH is the Director of Research for the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA, Carla is focused on continuously developing and enhancing a portfolio of work that leverages real-world data and experiences to inform and conduct clinical and post-market drug safety and effectiveness studies. Projects include those focused on developing and advancing frameworks and tools to systematically describe data sources and methods for use in real-world data studies, as well as the the Innovation in Medical Evidence, Development and Surveillance (IMEDS) Program – where such tools can be leveraged. IMEDS leverages a distributed network and tools developed by the FDA’s Sentinel initiative to design and execute post-market drug safety studies in a network of 9 healthcare systems representing over 111 M persons. Carla brings her extensive background in public health surveillannce and health outcomes research to this work.