Kristin Kostka, MPH
DPhil Candidate
University of Oxford
Kristin Kostka is a global leader in real-world evidence (RWE) generation, with over fifteen years of experience designing and implementing innovative, large-scale outcomes research initiatives. She has held leadership roles at Northeastern University, IQVIA, and Deloitte, where she developed expertise in harmonising data, leading multinational teams, and applying technology to regulatory science. Currently on a professional sabbatical to complete her Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in Clinical Epidemiology and Medical Statistics at the University of Oxford, her research focuses on phenotyping complex diseases across real-world databases, with long COVID (post-COVID condition) as a clinical example.
A long-standing member of the OHDSI community, Kristin has served on the OHDSI Steering Committee, U.S. Symposium Scientific Committee, the Education Workgroup, and the Women of OHDSI workgroup. She co-authored three chapters of the Book of OHDSI (Where to Begin, Building Cohorts, and OHDSI Network Research) and led numerous network studies that push the boundaries of open science. Kristin was one of the core facilitators for the OHDSI COVID-19 Study-a-thon. She then served as a principal investigator for the follow-on research program, Project CHARYBDIS (Characterizing Health Associated Risks, and Your Baseline Disease In SARS-COV-2), which advanced the understanding of the distribution and determinants of COVID-19.
Kristin’s dedication has earned her numerous accolades, including the 2020 Elon University Young Alumni Council “Top 10 Under 10” Alumni Award, the 2018 OHDSI Titan Award in Community Collaboration, a 3-time recipient of Deloitte Outstanding Performance Award and an 8-time recipient of the Deloitte Applause Award for exceptional client service. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science from Elon University and a Master’s in Public Health in Epidemiology from Boston University.
Her personal journey as a young stroke survivor and rare disease advocate fuels her passion for disrupting and innovating healthcare systems to better serve patients globally. Outside of her professional work, Kristin is a competitive adaptive athlete, exemplifying resilience in both life and sport.
*Last name changed from Feeney to Kostka in 2018.*
ORCID: 0000-0003-2595-8736
PUBLICATIONS:
Quaye A, DiPalazzo J, Kostka K, Richard JM, Beers-Mulroy B, Peck M, Krulee R, Zhang Y. Identifying factors associated with persistent opioid use after total joint arthroplasty: a retrospective review. Pain Medicine. 2024 Nov 20:pnae120.
Bu F, Schuemie MJ, Nishimura A, Smith LH, Kostka K, Falconer T, et al. Bayesian safety surveillance with adaptive bias correction. Stat Med. 2024;43: 395–418. doi:10.1002/sim.9968
Català M, Mercadé-Besora N, Kolde R, Trinh NTH, Roel E, Burn E, Rathod-Mistry T, Kostka K, et al. The effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines to prevent long COVID symptoms: staggered cohort study of data from the UK, Spain, and Estonia. Lancet Respir Med. 2024;12: 225–236. doi:10.1016/S2213-2600(23)00414-9
Kostka K, Roel E, Trinh NTH, Mercadé-Besora N, Delmestri A, Mateu L, et al. “The burden of post-acute COVID-19 symptoms in a multinational network cohort analysis.” Nat Commun. 2023;14: 1–10. doi:10.1038/s41467-023-42726-0
Sholle ET, Davila MA, Kostka K, Abedian S, Cusick M, Krichevsky S, et al. Comparative Merits of Available Mortality Data Sources for Clinical Research. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2023;2023: 634–640. Available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38222379
Reese JT, Blau H, Casiraghi E, Bergquist T, Loomba JJ, Callahan TJ… Kostka K, Valentine G, Sahner D, Chute CG, Madlock-Brown C, Haendel M, Robinson P. Generalisable long COVID subtypes: Findings from the NIH N3C and RECOVER programmes. EBioMedicine. 2023 Jan 1;87.
Pfaff ER, Madlock-Brown C, Baratta JM, Bhatia A, Davis H, Girvin A, Hill E, Kelly L, Kostka K, et al. Coding Long COVID: Characterizing a new disease through an ICD-10 lens. BMC medicine 21.1 (2023): 1-13.
Pfaff ER, Girvin AT, Bennett TD, Bhatia A, Brooks IM, Deer RR, Dekermanjian JP, Jolley SE, Kahn MG, Kostka K, et al. Identifying who has long COVID in the USA: a machine learning approach using N3C data. Lancet Digit Health. 2022. doi:10.1016/S2589-7500(22)00048-6
Williams RD, Markus AF, Yang C, Duarte-Salles T…Kostka K… Rijnbeek, PR. Seek COVER: using a disease proxy to rapidly develop and validate a personalized risk calculator for COVID-19 outcomes in an international network. BMC Medical Research Methodology. 2022 Dec;22(1):1-3.
Kostka K, Duarte-Salles T, Prats-Uribe A, Sena A, Pistillo A, Khalid S, Lai L, et al. Unraveling COVID-19: a large-scale characterization of 4.5 million COVID-19 cases using CHARYBDIS. Unraveling COVID-19: A Large-Scale Characterization of 4.5 Million COVID-19 Cases Using CHARYBDIS. Clin Epidemiol. 2022;14:369-384
Burn E, Duarte-Salles T, Fernandez-Bertolin S, Reyes C, Kostka K, Delmestri A, et al. Venous or arterial thrombosis and deaths among COVID-19 cases: a European network cohort study. Lancet Infect Dis. 2022. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00223-7
Morales DR, Ostropolets A, Lai L, Sena A, Duvall S, Suchard M… Kostka K. Characteristics and outcomes of COVID-19 patients with and without asthma from the United States, South Korea, and Europe. J Asthma. 2022; 1–11. doi:10.1080/02770903.2021.2025392
Burn E, Li X, Kostka K, Stewart HM, Reich C, Seager S, et al. Background rates of five thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndromes of special interest for COVID-19 vaccine safety surveillance: Incidence between 2017 and 2019 and patient profiles from 38.6 million people in six European countries. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2022. doi:10.1002/pds.5419
Pfaff ER, Haendel MA, Kostka K, Lee A, Niehaus E, Palchuk MB, et al. Ensuring a safe(r) harbor: Excising personally identifiable information from structured electronic health record data. J Clin Transl Sci. 2022;6: e10. doi:10.1017/cts.2021.880
Williams RD, Markus AF, Yang C, Duarte-Salles T, Duvall S, Falconer T, Jonnagaddala J, Kim C, Rho Y, Williams A, Alberga A, An MH, Aragón M, Areia C, Burn E, Choi Y, Drakos I, Fernandes Abrahão M, Fernández-Bertolín S, Hripcsak G, Kaas-Hansen B, Kandukuri P, Kors J, Kostka K et al. Seek COVER: using a disease proxy to rapidly develop and validate a personalized risk calculator for COVID-19 outcomes in an international network. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2022;22: 35. doi:10.1186/s12874-022-01505-z
Pfaff ER, Girvin AT, Gabriel DL, Kostka K, Morris M, Palchuk M, et al. Synergies between Centralized and Federated Approaches to Data Quality: A Report from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2021. doi:10.1093/jamia/ocab217
Bennett TD, Moffitt RA, Hajagos JG, Amor B, Anand A, Bissell MM, Bradwell KR, Bremer C, Byrd JB, Denham A, DeWitt PE, Gabriel D, Garibaldi BT, Girvin AT, Guinney J, Hill EL, Hong SS, Jimenez H, Kavuluru R, Kostka K, et al. Clinical Characterization and Prediction of Clinical Severity of SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among US Adults Using Data From the US National COVID Cohort Collaborative. JAMA Netw Open. 2021;4: e2116901. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.16901
Duarte-Salles T, Vizcaya D, Pistillo A… Kostka K, Prieto-Alhambra D. Thirty-Day Outcomes of Children and Adolescents With COVID-19: An International Experience. Pediatrics. 2021;148. doi:10.1542/peds.2020-042929
Recalde M, Roel E, Pistillo A, Sena AG, Prats-Uribe A, … Kostka K, Duarte Salles T. Characteristics and outcomes of 627 044 COVID-19 patients living with and without obesity in the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Int J Obes. 2021. doi:10.1038/s41366-021-00893-4
Prats-Uribe A, Sena AG, Lai LYH… Duarte-Salles T, Kostka K, Ryan PB, Prieto-Alhambra D. Use of repurposed and adjuvant drugs in hospital patients with covid-19: multinational network cohort study. BMJ. 2021;373: n1038. doi:10.1136/bmj.n1038
Tan EH, Sena AG, Prats-Uribe A, You SC, Ahmed W-U-R, Kostka K, et al. COVID-19 in patients with autoimmune diseases: characteristics and outcomes in a multinational network of cohorts across three countries. Rheumatology (Oxford). 2021 Mar 16:keab250. doi: 10.1093/rheumatology/keab250. PMID: 33725121
Reps JM, Kim C, Williams RD, Markus AF, Yang C, Salles TD, Falconer T, Jonnagaddala J, Williams A, Fernández-Bertolín S, DuVall SL, Kostka K, et al. Can we trust the prediction model? Illustrating the importance of external validation by implementing the COVID-19 Vulnerability (C-19) Index across an international network of observational healthcare datasets. JMIR Med Inform. 2021 Feb 27. doi: 10.2196/21547. PMID: 33661754
Jin S, Kostka K, Posada JD, Kim Y et al. Prediction of Major Depressive Disorder Following Beta-Blocker Therapy in Patients with Cardiovascular Diseases. J Pers Med. 2020 Dec 18;10(4):288. doi: 10.3390/jpm10040288
Lane JCE, Weaver J, Kostka K, Duarte-Salles et al. Risk of depression, suicidal ideation, suicide and psychosis with hydroxychloroquine treatment for rheumatoid arthritis: a multi-national network cohort study. Rheumatology. 2020; 2020.07.17.20156059. doi:10.1101/2020.07.17.20156059
Morales DR, Conover MM, You SC, Pratt N, Kostka K, Duarte Salles T et al. Renin-angiotensin system blockers and susceptibility to COVID-19: a multinational open science cohort study. Lancet Digital Health. 2020. doi:10.1101/2020.06.11.20125849
Haendel MA, Chute C, Bennett TD, Eichmann E, Guinney J, Kibbe WA, Payne PR, Pfaff ER, Wilbanks J, Wilcox AB, Williams AE, Wu C, Blacketer B, Bradford RL, Cimino JJ, Clark M, Colmenares EW, Francis PA, Gabriel D, Graves A, Hemadri R, Hong SR, Hripcsak G, Jiao D, Klann JF, Kostka K et al. the N3C Consortium, The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C): Rationale, design, infrastructure, and deployment, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, ocaa196, doi:10.1093/jamia/ocaa196
Burn E, You SC, Sena AG, Kostka K et al. Deep phenotyping of 34,128 adult patients hospitalised with COVID-19 in an international network study. Nat Commun. 2020;11: 5009. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-18849-z
Lane JCE, Weaver J, Kostka K et al. Risk of hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis: a multinational, retrospective study. Lancet Rheumatol. 2020;2: e698–e711. doi:10.1016/S2665-9913(20)30276-9
Wang Q, Reps JM, Kostka KF et al. (2020) Development and validation of a prognostic model predicting symptomatic hemorrhagic transformation in acute ichemic stroke at scale in the OHDSI network. PLOS ONE 15(1): e0226718. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226718.
ORAL PRESENTATIONS
Kostka K, Alshammari T, Khera R, Wang S. The Journey to Reliable Evidence. OHDSI Global Symposium 2021 (Virtual). Sep 14, 2021.
Kostka K, Morris M, Palchuk M, Pfaff E, Miller R. Pandemic Informatics: Tuning Expectations of Real World Data – Lessons Learned from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C). AMIA 2021 Virtual Informatics Summit, Mar 25, 2021.
Lehmann H. Kostka K. et al. Harmonizing What to Analyse in the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C): Lessons Learned. AMIA 2021 Virtual Informatics Summit, Mar 24, 2021.
Kostka K. Prieto-Alhambra D. Suchard M. You Seng Chan. OHDSI Community in Action: COVID-19 Panel. OHDSI Asia-Pacific Symposium 2020 (Virtual), Dec 5, 2020.
Kostka K. International Distributed Research Network (DRN) to Combat COVID-19, Korean HIRA Big Data Forum (Virtual), Sep 16, 2020.
Kostka K. Computable Guidelines in the 21st Century: Evidence-Based Knowledge and Digital Quality, NCQA Digital Quality Summit (Virtual), Jul 22-23, 2020.
Kostka K. OHDSI Data Network in Action. OHDSI COVID-19 Study-a-thon, Global Telecast. Mar 29, 2020.
Beaton M, Kostka K, Reps J, Ostropolets A. Predicting Breast Cancer to Improve Screening, OHDSI US Symposium 2019, Bethesda, MD, Sep 16, 2019.
Drahos J, Kostka K, Lane J, Lopez A. Levelling the Playing Field in STEM – How to Attract and Retain Female Talent. The Equality Lounge @ AWS Reinvent 2018, Las Vegas, NV, Nov 26-30, 2018.
Cruz A, Kostka K, Liu J. Streamlining Application Development with AWS Service Catalog. AWS Reinvent, Las Vegas, NV, Nov 26-30, 2018.
Al-Qahtani N, Feeney K, Natarajan K, Po MJ, Rao G. Stakeholder Perspectives on the Journey Ahead. OHDSI Symposium 2017, Bethesda, MD, Oct 18, 2017.
Andryc A, Feeney K, van Bochove K, Natarajan K. Case Study: The Observational Health Data Sciences & Informatics (OHDSI) Collaborative. BioIT World 2017, Boston, MA. May 23-25, 2017.
Feeney K, Matheny M, Park RW, Perotte A, Reich C, Reisinger S. Where are we on the journey right now? How did we get here? OHDSI Symposium 2016, Washington, DC, Sep 23, 2016.
POSTER PRESENTATIONS
Peck M., Beers-Mulroy B, Richard J, Krulee, R., Stoddard, H., Kostka K., … & Quaye, A. (2024). Characteristics Associated with Persistent Opioid Use Following Total Joint Arthroplasty. Costas T. Lambrew Research Retreat 2024, Portland, ME,
Kostka K et al. Long COVID symptoms following primo- vs reinfection: a multinational cohort analysis of primary care records from Catalonia and the UK. ICPE 2023, Halifax, NS, Aug 23-27, 2023.
Kostka K et al. It Takes a Village: Community-Driven Phenotyping to Address a Public Health Crisis. OHDSI Global Symposium, Bethesda, MD. Oct 14, 2022.
Kostka K et al. Techniques for characterising long COVID in real world data. ICPE 2022, Copenhagen, DK, Aug 24-28, 2022.
Kostka K et al. Implementing the OHDSI Community Approach to Phenotype a Complex Medical Condition in European Primary Care Data. OHDSI European Symposium 2022, Rotterdam, NE, Jun 24, 2022.
Kostka K et al. Increasing the Representativeness of OHDSI Network Studies through Globalization of the OHDSI Community. OHDSI US Symposium 2019, Bethesda, MD, Sep 16, 2019.
Ostropolets A, Molinaro A, De Falco F, Liaw ST, Park RW, Spotniz ME, Kostka K et al. Concept Heterogeneity in the OHDSI Network. OHDSI US Symposium 2019, Bethesda, MD, Sep 16, 2019.
Spotnitz ME, Burn E, Hamilton TW, Geller J, Kostka K, Natarjan K. The Association Between Preoperative 3D Rendering Prior to an Elective Total Knee, Shoulder or Hip Arthroplasty and Postoperative Outcomes: Real World Evidence from the OHDSI Network. OHDSI US Symposium 2019, Bethesda, MD, Sep 16, 2019.
Kostka K, Beaulah S, Marshall E, Hamlin BN. Reimagining Quality Reporting using the OMOP CDM NOTE_NLP Table: A Pilot. OHDSI US Symposium 2019, Bethesda, MD, Sep 16, 2019.
Feeney K, Sobti R, Anantha S, Kurapati VC, Sharma A. Extending Open Source OHDSI Analytics Applications to Enable Automated Data Characterization of Clinical Trials Data. BioIT World 2016, Boston, MA. Apr 5-8, 2016.
Gibson CM, Tricoci P, Abueg C, Feeney K, et al. Lack of concordance between clinical sites, angiographic core laboratory, and CEC in the assessment of stent thrombosis: results from the TRACER angiographic sub-study. ESC Congress 2013, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Aug 31-Sep 4, 2013.
Chan RH, Hong S, Haas TS, Feeney K, Lesser J et al. “Characterization of patients with massive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy using contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging: does contrast provide additional information?” 15th Annual SCMR Scientific Sessions, Orlando, FL. Feb 2-5, 2012.
