Overview

Martha Wetzel is a PhD Candidate in Health Policy and Health Services Research. Her dissertation focuses on controlled substance policies and their effects on patients with chronic conditions. She is particularly interested in patient centered outcomes for pain care, gabapentin and opioid policies, and differences in chronic pain development by education level. Ms. Wetzel has extensive experience using health care claims and encounter data, including Medicaid, commercial, and all-payer claims. Prior to joining the HPM department as a PhD student, she worked as a biostatistician for the Department of Pediatrics in Emory's School of Medicine and as a data analyst for Health Services Advisory Group, Inc (HSAG).

She has been awarded a NIH/NIDA T32 Predoctoral Fellowship, Training in Advanced Data Analytics to End Drug-Related Harms (NIDA grant 5T32DA050552), as well the Livingston Fellowship, which recognizes achievements of doctoral students in the Rollins School of Public Health. Her master's thesis, "Unintended Consequences of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs", won the Charles C Shepard award for the most scholarly master's thesis in the Rollins School of Public Health and was subsequently published in Health Services Research.

Google Scholar Profile 

GitHub

Select Publications

Wetzel M, Howard DH, Giordano NA, Patrick SW, Yarbrough CR. Do Must-Access Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) Affect Pain and Physical Impairment Outcomes in Older Adults? [Preprint] medRxiv. 2025:2025.06.02.25328258.

Wetzel M, Howard DH, Giordano NA, Patrick SW, Yarbrough CR. Do controlled substance restrictions affect adherence? The case of gabapentin scheduling in Virginia. (Under review at Medical Care)

Peterson EN, Edwards A, Wetzel M, Waller LA, Cooper H, Yarbrough C. A Bayesian Spatio-Temporal Top-Down Framework for Estimating Opioid Use Disorder Risk Under Data Sparsity [Preprint], arXiv. 2025:2506.02303.

Graetz I, Hu X, Ji X, Wetzel M, Yarbrough CR. The effect of cancer exemption in mandatory-access prescription drug monitoring programs among oncologists. JNCI Cancer Spectr. 2023 Mar 1;7(2):pkad006.

Wetzel M, von Esenwein S, Yarbrough CR, Hockenberry JM. Association of Prescription Drug Monitoring Program Laws with Bedridden and Missed Work Days. Health services research. 2021;56(6):1215-1221.

Wetzel M, Hockenberry JM, Raval MV. Opioid Fills in Children Undergoing Surgery from 2011 to 2014: A Retrospective Analysis of Relationships Among Age, Initial Days Supplied, and Refills. Ann Surg. 2019;274(2):e174-e180.

Wetzel M, Hockenberry JM, Raval MV. Interventions for Postsurgical Opioid Prescribing: A Systematic Review. JAMA Surgery. 2018;153(10):948-954.