Turki Bin Hammad

My name is Turki Bin Hammad. I am an epidemiologist interested in causal inference using both randomized-controlled trials and observational data to estimate the causal effects of treatments and vaccines. I have a background in pharmacy and more than 6 years of experience as a regulatory reviewer of the efficacy and safety of human treatments and vaccines. I recently graduated with a master degree in epidemiology with distinction and worked on utilizing routinely collected health data to estimate causal effects of treatments in under-represented populations in randomized trials using the target trial framework. My interest in causal inference started with my first clinical review. It was a review of a single-arm interventional trial for a late stage cancer treatment. This was the most challenging task to do at that time especially that the leading regulatory bodies had different opinions. To try and estimate causal effects from single-arm studies, it was a room full of uncertainties. This became harder as my decision as a regulatory reviewer will not impact only few patients but the whole Saudi patients with such disease. Since then, I believed that since regulatory decisions will impact the whole patient population, it is my responsibility to ensure that the treatment effects are true causal effects of the pharmacological interventions under review no matter how complex the methodology needs to be.