Leila Kahwati

Leila C. Kahwati, MD, MPH, is a primary care physician with more than 20 years of experience developing, implementing, and evaluating programs, interventions, and policies in healthcare settings to improve the delivery of care and patient health outcomes. She is board certified in family medicine and in general preventive medicine/public health and has additional training in epidemiology and health services research. Her expertise lies in evidence synthesis including systematic reviews, meta-analysis, scoping reviews, rapid reviews, signal searches, and environmental scans. She has experience evaluating risk of bias across various study designs and in applying GRADE within reviews. Most recently she has contributed to methods work related to the use of AI within systematic reviews.

Dr. Kahwati has served in various project roles, including project director and associate project director, task lead, and senior scientific advisor on a number of projects for government clients, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in addition to not-for-profit clients. She is Director of the RTI-University of North Carolina Evidence-based Practice Center and regularly supports the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the State of Washington Health Technology Assessment Program, and the Drug Effectiveness Review Project.