At the heart of Denver Health are hundreds of world-class researchers working every day to transform medicine and improve lives. Below are a few of our researchers who are pioneering breakthroughs that shape the future of health care.
Sonia Okuyama, MD
Division Chief, Hematology and Oncology
Dr. Sonia Okuyama leads cancer care at Denver Health with a focus on expanding access and building systems that work for underserved populations. Since becoming division chief in 2018, she has doubled the oncology workforce and established a multidisciplinary team including nurses, pharmacists, behavioral health providers, palliative care, and genetic services.
Her research focuses on building systems to enhance the support of patients with cancer. More recently, she has focused her research on cancer prevention and genetic risk assessment in communities historically excluded from specialty care. She helped lead the CHARM study (Cancer Health Assessments Reaching Many), a national initiative to expand access to hereditary cancer risk evaluation. The study developed a patient-facing screening tool that performed well in primary care settings with limited resources.
She also contributes to research on adherence to surveillance after genetic testing, highlighting gaps in follow-through among high-risk groups. A native Spanish speaker serving a majority Spanish-speaking patient population, Dr. Okuyama brings implementation science and lived experience together to support families across generations.
Daniel “Dante” Yeh, MD, MHPE, FACS, FCCM
Chief of Emergency General Surgery
Dr. Daniel “Dante” Yeh is a trauma surgeon and surgical critical care physician at Denver Health, where he leads Emergency General Surgery and founded the Surgical Nutrition Service. He cares for highly complex cases such as short bowel syndrome, intestinal failure and enterocutaneous fistulas.
A national leader in surgical nutrition, Dr. Yeh chairs the CNSC Certification Exam committee and serves as chair of the Critical Care Section of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN). He has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and 20 book chapters on topics such as nutritional support in critical illness, indirect calorimetry and fistula management.
His research on trauma care extends to national trauma registries—comparing outcomes of splenectomy versus angioembolization, profiling survival trends in severe liver trauma and analyzing the risks tied to discretionary, single-unit blood transfusions in injured patients. His studies inform national standards for nutrition, transfusion and trauma surgery protocols.
Through clinical innovation and rigorous evidence-building, Dr. Yeh elevates trauma and surgical critical care practices, improving outcomes for Denver’s most critically injured patients and shaping standards of care across the country.
Joshua C. Black, PhD
Senior Statistical Scientist, Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety
Dr. Joshua Black is a statistical scientist at Denver Health’s Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety (RMPDS) whose work tracks national trends in substance use, overdose, and the public health impact of drug policy. He blends large-scale surveillance data, predictive modeling, and targeted surveys to map emerging risks and guide evidence-based interventions.
His research spans high-priority areas including opioid-involved mortality, race-related disparities in naloxone access, and the evolving use of psychedelics. In a 2025 Annals of Emergency Medicine study, Dr. Black and colleagues analyzed “psychedelic tourism”—travel to states with decriminalization or regulated access—highlighting implications for emergency care, harm reduction, and preparedness.
A Pilot Study Grant Program (PSGP) awardee, Dr. Black exemplifies Denver Health’s learning health system model: turning data into action for clinicians, health systems, and public health partners. His work informs policy and resource allocation in Colorado and across the U.S. with a consistent focus on reducing preventable harm for people too often left out of traditional care.
Zoe Bouchelle, MD
Chair of Inpatient Pediatrics
Dr. Zoe Bouchelle is a pediatric hospitalist and health services researcher whose work centers on addressing families’ social and economic needs to advance child health equity. At Denver Health, she is engaged in clinic-connected interventions that help all children thrive, linking research to care in a safety-net learning health system.
At the health system level her recent projects include an Inpatient Food Pharmacy program that provides home-delivered prepared meals and produce to families after a child’s hospitalization—demonstrating strong enrollment, acceptability, and feasibility for scaling within routine care. She also led a pilot randomized trial of unconditional cash transfers for caregivers of preterm infants, testing the feasibility of income support as an upstream child-health intervention.
More broadly, Dr. Bouchelle studies how policies such as tax credits and child development accounts can better support families. She holds a master’s in health policy research from the University of Pennsylvania and trained at Harvard Medical School and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she also served as chief resident. Her current work is supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
Rachel Everhart, PhD
Director of Research, Data & Analytics, Ambulatory Care Services
Dr. Rachel Everhart directs clinical and operational data management, analysis and reporting for Denver Health’s Ambulatory Care Services. She leads program evaluation and predictive analytics to enhance electronic health records (EHR) systems and support equity-driven care, especially for medically underserved populations.
Her work includes developing an EHR registry to better identify patients experiencing homelessness. This registry captured 30% more individuals than standard methods, improving outreach to female, older, Hispanic/Latinx and Black patients. She also supports Denver Housing to Health, bridging health systems and supportive housing to serve chronically homeless patients with high health care utilization.
As a key architect of Denver Health’s learning health system infrastructure, she builds and tests integrated data systems that feed back into care delivery, operations and policy. This informs clinical decision making for high-risk populations, including transitions from the justice system, mortality surveillance partnerships with public health, and embedding substance use treatment information into EHR workflows. She also implemented engagement tools, using data-driven messaging to increase preventive care access, vaccinations and follow-up.
Edward Gardner, MD
Medical Director, Infectious Disease Clinic & Director of HIV Clinical Research
Dr. Edward Gardner leads HIV clinical care and research at Denver Health’s Public Health Institute, serving as Medical Director of the Infectious Disease Clinic and Director of HIV Clinical Research. An infectious disease physician and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado, he has shaped Denver’s HIV response through national trials and care innovations that improve engagement in care, adherence to antiretroviral therapy, and viral suppression—particularly in underserved populations.
His research has advanced the HIV care continuum, or “cascade,” a framework he helped develop that is now used worldwide to track and improve outcomes. He has led and contributed to multicenter studies through NIH and NIAID networks, including START, REPRIEVE, and the AIDS Malignancy Consortium’s ANCHOR study, which focus on prevention, treatment, and cancer screening for people with HIV.
Dr. Gardner also leads Denver Health’s participation in the NIH-sponsored RECOVER study, the nation’s largest long COVID initiative, which tracks diverse patients to refine diagnosis, classification, and care strategies for persistent post-COVID symptoms.
Jason Haukoos, MD, MSc
Emergency Physician and Principal Investigator
Dr. Jason Haukoos is an emergency physician and research leader who brings science directly to the bedside. At Denver Health, he integrates clinical trials into real-time patient care—using innovative electronic health record (EHR) tools to embed evidence gathering into the everyday rhythms of emergency medicine.
He co-leads the DETECT Hep C trial, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and published in JAMA. It is the largest study to date of hepatitis C screening strategies in emergency departments. The findings, that routine, universal screening outperforms targeted approaches, reinforce national guidelines and could accelerate public health efforts to eliminate hepatitis C.
Beyond infectious disease, Dr. Haukoos is advancing the emerging field of social emergency medicine, which brings a health equity lens to emergency care. As a leader in the Colorado Social Emergency Medicine Collaborative, he works to ensure that clinical care reflects patients’ lived experiences—connecting research, evaluation, and strategic initiatives to Denver Health’s mission of serving vulnerable populations.
Benjamin A. Steinberg, MD, MHS
Director of Electrophysiology
Dr. Benjamin Steinberg is a cardiac electrophysiologist whose research spans the full spectrum of arrhythmia care. At Denver Health, his work follows a learning health system approach—embedding research into patient care, evaluating interventions in real-world settings and rapidly applying evidence to improve outcomes.
He has led multicenter studies demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of intravenous sotalol for atrial arrhythmias, showing that IV use can shorten hospital stays while maintaining efficacy. His research in cardiac devices includes analyzing defibrillator battery longevity, reporting the first use of a leadless pacemaker after tricuspid valve replacement and advancing the use of wearable and mobile technologies to improve rhythm monitoring.
He also applies artificial intelligence to electrocardiogram (ECG) data, helping identify patients with low ejection fraction and advancing personalized care in atrial fibrillation. His work underscores the importance of outcomes that reflect patient experience and physiology, bridging clinical innovation, technology and data science to improve cardiovascular health.
