Description of Research Expertise

Dr. Delgado is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Epidemiology with tenure at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the faculty director of the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit, the world’s first behavioral design team embedded within a health system. He is also an attending physician in the emergency department at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, an associate director at the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, co-chair the Penn Medicine's Opioid Task Force, and co-director of Penn PORTAL (Patient-Oriented Research and Training to Accelerate Learning), one of 16 U.S. Centers of Excellence in learning health system science.

Dr. Delgado's research blends behavioral and data science with insights gleaned from practicing emergency medicine in an urban trauma center to guide patients and clinicians toward decisions that enhance personal safety and improve the quality of acute care. He is passionate about leading multidisciplinary teams to address pressing public health problems. His portfolio includes work to curb the opioid overdose crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, reduce trauma and firearm injuries, and decrease distracted and alcohol-impaired driving.

Consistent throughout Dr. Delgado's work is an effort to redesign choice environments to make the safe choice the easy and more attractive choice. To this end, he uses a broad set of methodological approaches, including user centered design methods, observational comparative effectiveness methods for analyzing hospital encounter data, and pragmatic randomized trials of digital behavioral interventions delivered via electronic health records, automated text messaging, and smartphone apps. He is a leader in learning health systems research. Many of the interventions his teams have developed and implemented have been scaled as the standard of care.

His achievements have been recognized with the Academy Health Publication-of-the-Year Award, the Society for Medical Decision Making Lee Lusted Prize for Outstanding Research, the Penn Medicine Marjorie A. Bowman New Investigator Research Award, the Pennsylvania Impact Award from City & State PA, and being elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation. Dr. Delgado is board certified in emergency medicine and addiction medicine. He received his bachelor's degree in public policy from Princeton University, his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, and his master's degree in health services research from Stanford University.