Dr. Grijalva is an Associate Professor in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology, Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He maintains appointments at the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center, the Center for Health Services Research, the Institute for Global Health, the Center for Data Science, and the Veterans Affairs Tennessee Valley Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center. He received his MD from Universidad Nacional San Luis Gonzaga in Ica, Peru. After training in field epidemiology and biostatistics, he joined the department of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt and earned his Master of Public Health (MPH) from Vanderbilt in 2006.

Dr. Grijalva specializes in the design and execution of observational studies of medications’ safety and effectiveness, and examinations of burden of disease and program evaluations. His research focuses on the study of opioid analgesics, biologics and other medications and their association with serious infections, and the study of vaccine-preventable diseases - especially pneumococcal and influenza infections - and the evaluation of vaccination programs. He has also led prospective domestic and international cohort studies that examined the burden of viral respiratory infections, the interaction between respiratory viruses and bacteria, and the transmission of respiratory pathogens within households. He has published more than 190 peer-reviewed articles.

Dr. Grijalva maintains an active portfolio of teaching and mentoring activities. He was elected a Vanderbilt University Chancellor Faculty Fellow in 2017 and into the Vanderbilt Academy for Excellence in Education and Mentorship in 2018. He has mentored several junior investigators and is a registered mentor in the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN). He serves as Co-Principal Investigator for a new T32 training grant focused on learning healthcare systems, and recently received a Mid-Career Investigator Award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)