For Hamlet Gasoyan, DS, PhD, MPH, the most important part of research doesn’t happen when a paper is published. It happens later—when the findings leave the page and begin shaping how care is delivered, covered, and understood.
“Publishing a paper is not the end of the work,” Gasoyan says. “If the evidence doesn’t reach the people who make decisions—or the patients who are affected by them—then it’s not doing what it’s supposed to do.”
Gasoyan earned his PhD at Temple University’s Barnett College of Public Health and now works as a health services researcher at Cleveland Clinic and an assistant professor of medicine. His work focuses on what happens in the real world when patients seek treatment for obesity and related chronic conditions—particularly what gets in the way.
“I study who gets treatment, who stays on it, and why people stop,” Gasoyan explains. “A lot of times, the issue isn’t whether something works. It’s whether people can actually afford it.”
Those questions show up in the places where his research lands: in studies that track why patients discontinue treatment early, in analyses used to model insurance coverage decisions, and in conversations with clinicians trying to help patients navigate what comes next when care becomes unaffordable.
Gasoyan began his career working directly with patients, first as a clinician. “You might know all the evidence-based treatments,” he says, “but if a patient can’t afford them or doesn’t have access, that knowledge only goes so far.”
Over time, that realization pulled him toward policy and health services research—work that looks beyond individual encounters to the systems that determine what’s possible for patients long before they enter an exam room.
That perspective deepened at Temple’s Barnett College of Public Health, where Gasoyan’s doctoral research focused on bariatric surgery and insurance coverage. “I was interested in why so many people qualify for effective treatments but never receive them,” he says. “Insurance design and coverage rules play a huge role.”
Today, that same question drives his work on GLP-1 medications for obesity. Using real-world data from Cleveland Clinic, Gasoyan studies how long patients stay on treatment, what dosages they reach, and what happens when therapy stops.
“One of the biggest findings is that many patients stop early,” he says. “And almost half of the time, it’s because of cost or insurance barriers—not because the treatment didn’t work.”
Those findings matter, he notes, because stopping treatment often means losing the health benefits patients gained. “Persistence matters,” Gasoyan says. “But staying on treatment isn’t always in a patient’s control.”
Beyond publishing, Gasoyan spends significant time talking with clinicians, policymakers, and journalists—something he traces back to his training at Temple. “We had media training as part of my PhD,” he recalls. “That was huge. It prepared me to explain complex research in a way people can actually use.”
For Gasoyan, that communication is inseparable from the research itself.
“If the work just sits in a journal,” he says, “it’s not doing much. The goal is for evidence to inform decisions—by clinicians, by policymakers, and ultimately for patients. That’s when it really matters.”