Resources For:

The PhD in Health Policy, awarded by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is a collaborative program of six Harvard University faculties: the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Kennedy School. This degree is intended for students seeking teaching careers in institutes of higher learning and/or research careers in health policy. Joseph P. Newhouse, John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management, is chair of the Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy that administers the program; Kath­erine Swartz, Professor of Health Economics and Policy, is director of graduate studies; and Deborah Whitney is associate director of the PhD program in Health Policy.

Candidates for the PhD in health policy will generally be in residence for two years before undertaking qualifying examinations. Satisfactory completion of those examinations is a prerequisite for writing a dissertation. Students are strongly encouraged to remain in residence in the Cambridge area until they have passed the dissertation proposal orals. However, the program encourages students to remain in residence throughout the disserta­tion stage as well. Continuation of candidacy is contingent upon suitable progress and achievement during each aca demic year. 

For more informaion, visit www.healthpolicy.fas.harvard.edu. It is recommended that applicants obtain additional information about the PhD Program in Health Policy from Deborah Whitney, associate director, PhD Program in Health Policy, (617)-496­-5506, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . 

Admissions

A distinguished undergraduate record, as well as excellent performance in any graduate work undertaken, is required for admission to the PhD Program in Health Policy. Preference will be given to applicants who have had either some relevant work experience or graduate work after completion of a bachelor’s degree, although a previous graduate degree is not required. Scores from the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) or the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) that are five years old or less are required for all applicants. In addition, applicants whose native language is not English must take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).

The PhD Program in Health Policy is particularly committed to increasing the diversity of its doctoral student population. Minority candidates, including African-Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans are especially encouraged to apply.

Those wishing to apply to the MD program at the Harvard Medical School, as well as to the PhD Program in Health Policy, must apply separately to each program and indicate in the application to the PhD Program that a concurrent application has been submitted to the Harvard Medical School. Those admitted to both programs can combine some of the coursework to save time.

Similarly, applicants interested in the Coordinated JD/PhD program must apply to and be separately admitted to both the Law School and the PhD Program in Health Policy before applying to the Coordinated JD/ PhD Program. Applicants should indicate in the application to the PhD Program that a concur­rent application has been submitted to Harvard Law School.

Applicants are asked to 1) include a curriculum vitae or résumé with the applica­tion to the program; 2) indicate on a sepa­rate page in the application which area(s) of concentration and which policy area(s) within the program are of special interest; up to two areas of concentration may be speci­fied; 3) include letters of recommendation (recommenders may submit letters online instead); 4) send fall term grades when avail­able if attending school while applying to the program.

The application deadline is in mid-December for admission in the following fall. Prospective applicants may visit the GSAS Website to apply online or to request an application. 

Financial Aid

The department offers funding for financial support of graduate study, based both on need and merit. For example, thanks to grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Library of Medi­cine, the program can offer some traineeships to students who are US citizens or perma­nent residents of the US. As the program is committed to increasing the diversity of the doctoral student population, Harvard provides Graduate Prize Fellowships (tuition for five years in the program and a stipend for three years) to underrepresented minority appli­cants, with financial need, who are admitted to the program. Applicants are encouraged to apply for external grants and fellowships whenever possible. The program has created a list of fellowship opportunities in health policy, which will be sent to you upon request.

Degree Requirements

The PhD program has the following compo­nents:

• two years of coursework, including a core course

• concentration in one academic discipline (decision sciences, economics, ethics, evalu­ative science and statistics, management, medical sociology, or political analysis) and specialization in one policy area (environmen­tal health, health care services, international health, mental health, or public health)

• three one-term courses, chosen from three concentrations outside a student’s field of concentration. The statistics requirement (noted below) may be used to satisfy one of the three requirements, except for students concentrating in evaluative science and sta­tistics

• two one-term courses in statistics

• one course in epidemiology

• written general and concentration examinations following two years of course work; the general exam contains an oral component

• a weekly research seminar starting in the third year

• a dissertation prospectus and oral examination

• a dissertation based on original research and a dissertation defense 

Concentrations

Students in the PhD in health policy program choose a concentration and meet specific curric­ulum requirements in one of the following seven disciplines. For complete information on each concentration, including course requirements for each, please visit the program website.

Decision Sciences

(Professor Milton C. Weinstein, chair). Decision sciences are the collection of quantitative techniques that are used for decision making at the individual and collective level. They include decision analysis, risk analysis, cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis, decision modeling, and behavioral decision theory, as well as parts of operations research, microeconomics, statistical infer­ence, management control, cognitive and social psychology, and computer science. The concentration in decision sciences prepares students for research careers that involve the application of these methods to health problems.

Economics

(Professor Joseph P. Newhouse, chair). The concentration in economics focuses on the economic behavior of indi­viduals; providers; insurers; and interna­tional, federal, state, and local governments and actors as their actions affect health and medical care. In addition to examining the literature on health economics, the training emphasizes microeconomic theory, economet­rics, and interactions with other disciplines, including clinical medicine. The concentration prepares students for research and teaching careers as health economists.

Ethics

(Professor Norman Daniels, chair). The ethics concentration integrates quantitative, qualitative, and normative approaches to the analysis of ethical issues in health policy and clinical practice. Increasingly, the investigation of ethical issues in medicine and health policy has not only drawn on normative ethics and political philosophy, but has included empir­ical research concerning attitudes and practices in clinical and broader institutional settings. A grasp of normative theories and tools is impor­tant because ethical principles and approaches underlie, explicitly or implicitly, the formula­tion of particular health policies at both the macro and micro level. Students in this track will focus on developing skills in a range of disciplines, with the goal of evaluating how ethical and socio-cultural values shape—and should shape—health policies as well as clin­ical and public health practices. Students with a strong background in ethics and political philosophy will have a chance to deepen that understanding and apply it to issues in health policy while at the same time acquiring neces­sary quantitative skills. Students with degrees or training in related fields, such as law or medicine or public health, will acquire both normative and quantitative skills needed for research and teaching in ethics and health policy.

Research in health policy and ethics would include such topics as: policies for the allocation of scarce resources to individuals (e.g., human organs for transplantation, newly developed drugs, hospital beds) and across categories of patients (treatment vs. prevention for HIV/AIDS, or for HIV/AIDS vs. malaria); policies for care at the beginning and end of life; evaluation of informed consent protocols and their effectiveness; issues of equity in the evaluation of policies determining access to health services and the reduction of risk factors; policies responding to cross-cultural variation in ethical norms; ways in which health professionals are educated; policies regarding the balance between the individual and the collective (e.g., in bio-terrorism, epidemic control, etc.). While not abandoning the concerns of traditional work in bioethics, the program aims to produce students who are interested in the ethics of population health. Accordingly, students in this track will develop core skills for the conduct of both normative analysis and empirical research in ethics. 

Evaluative Science and Statistics

(Professor Stephen B. Soumerai and Professor Alan M. Zaslavsky, co-chairs). Training in this concen­tration will enable students to study the effects of a wide range of policies and health services (e.g., health insurance, health-care quality improvement, clinical decision-making, drug policy, cost-containment, and socioeconomic factors) on behaviors, access, processes and quality of health care, health outcomes, or costs. Students in this concentration will develop proficiency in experimental and quasi-experimental research design, statistics, relevant social sciences, and other meth­odological approaches (e.g., epidemiology, program evaluation, qualitative methods, and survey design). 

Management

(Professor Amy Edmondson and Associate Professor Robert S. Huckman, co-chairs). The management con centration prepares students to do research on the orga­nizational, managerial, and strategic issues facing health care providers, payers, and other players in the health care market. Students in this track will learn how theories and concepts from fields such as technology and operations management, organizational behavior, organi­zational economics, and competitive strategy can be applied to health care organizations. Students in this track should have a strong interest in pursuing research on such issues as the design and improvement of health care delivery processes, approaches for improving health care quality and productivity, the devel­opment and adoption of new medical tech­nologies, financial incentives in health care, the new role of patients as consumers in health care, the appropriate ownership and organiza­tional structure of hospitals and other health care providers, and the management of profes­sional health care staffs. We expect students completing this track to find jobs in academic and research institutions that have an interest in the impact of management on health care.

Medical Sociology

(Professors Nicholas A. Christakis and Peter V. Marsden, co-chairs). In this concentration, students will learn about, and contribute to knowledge in, several research areas that are extremely important to health policy, including the study of profes­sions and professional behavior, the structure of health care organizations and systems, the impact of organizational and professional change on the structure of medical work, organizational improvement programs and their evaluation, evaluation of intervention programs, the diffusion of innovations across providers and organizations, and the behavior of patients and consumers—including consumer evaluations of health care quality and patient perspectives on the process and outcomes of care. Research on these substan­tive topics will be necessarily interdisciplinary. In particular, students should develop a strong grounding in psychological and sociological theories of individual behavior and theories of institutions, organizations, and professions.

Political Analysis

(Professor Robert J. Blendon, chair). This concentration is intended for students who wish to do research on the relationship between politics and health policy. Students will study theories of indi­vidual opinion formation, voting behavior, legislative organization, and interest group formation. In addition, students will examine the role of public opinion, interest groups, the media, and institutions in influencing health policy outcomes. The research methodolo­gies most utilized in this track include survey research methods and quantitative statistical methods appropriate for large-scale databases. Graduates of this concentration will likely teach and do research on the politics of health care and will be involved with government, professional, and consumer groups on research projects related to the politics of public policy in the public health and health services fields.

Policy Areas

In addition to choosing a concentration, students specialize in one of five areas of policy interest:

Environmental Health

(Professor James Hammitt, chair). This area is designed for students whose interests relate to environ­mental pollution. Examples of topics for study include community right-to-know laws, marketable pollution permits, effluent fees, technology-forcing regulation, and mass toxic tort litigation. 

Health Care Services.

This area is designed for students whose primary interests are access to health care, medical technology assess­ment, quality of health care, and the costs and financing of health care services. 

International Health

(Professor David E. Bloom, chair). This policy area focuses on the economic determinants and consequences of health and health care in countries other than the US, especially less developed countries.

Mental Health

(Professor Richard G. Frank, chair). This area is designed for students who wish to specialize in mental health policy, including the financing of services, the roles of public and private sectors, and the links between mental health and human services.

Public Health

(Professor Sue J. Goldie, chair). This area is designed for students who are interested in policies directed at the rates of disease and injury in the population. Major topics include smoking behavior, control of alcohol abuse, mental health, traffic accidents, dietary and nutritional recommendations, occupational safety, gun control, control of infectious diseases including AIDS, and food and drug regulation.

Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy/Research Interests

Alyce S. Adams, MPP, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Department of Ambulatory Care and Preven­tion, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Adams also serves on the Faculty Advisory Board for the Harvard University Native American Program. Her research focuses on disparities in pharmaceu­tical access and use among people with chronic illness and disability. Her most recent publica­tions have examined the impact of cost sharing and patient race on under use of clinically essential medications and other health services.

John Z. Ayanian, MD, MPP, is Professor of Medicine and of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Health Policy and Management, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. He also directs the General Internal Medicine Fellowship Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Ayanian’s research focuses on the effect of patients’ race, ethnicity, gender, insurance coverage, and socioeconomic characteristics on access to care and clinical outcomes, as well as the impact of physicians’ specialty and organi­zational characteristics on the quality of care.

Katherine Baicker, PhD, is Professor of Health Economics, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Baicker’s research areas include health economics, welfare, and public finance, with a particular focus on the financing of health insurance, spending on public programs, and fiscal federalism. She recently served as a Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, where she focused on the development and analysis of health policy.

Robert J. Blendon, MBA, ScD, is Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis, Harvard School of Public Health and John F. Kennedy School of Government. Blendon is best known for his research on public opinion and health policy; he has pioneered in studies of comparative public opinion. Blendon directs the Harvard Program on Public Opinion and Health and Social Policy, which focuses on the roles public opinion and leadership opinions play in the formation of our nation’s domestic agenda.

David Bloom, PhD, is Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demog­raphy and Chair, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. Bloom’s current research inter­ests include labor economics, health, demog­raphy, and the environment. He has written extensively on the linkages between health status and economic growth; the effects of population change on economic development; the determinants of wages, fringe benefits, and total family income; the adjudication of labor disputes; the measurement of discrimination; the emerging world labor market; the effects of rapid population growth; the economics of municipal solid waste; the sociology and economics of marriage and fertility; and the global spread and economic impacts of HIV and AIDS.

Allan M. Brandt, PhD, is Dean of the Grad­uate School of Arts and Sciences; Professor of the History of Science, Department of the History of Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; and Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School. His work focuses on social and ethical aspects of health, disease, and medical practices in the twentieth-century United States. Brandt is the author of The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America and No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880. He has written on the social history of epidemic disease; the history of public health; and the history of human subject research among other topics.

Daniel P. Carpenter, PhD, is Allie S. Freed Professor of Government, Department of Government, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. His health policy interests are government regula­tion of pharmaceuticals (FDA and worldwide), public attention to disease, network analysis of health policy lobbies and policymaking, historical development of pharmaceutical markets and regulatory institutions, and the impact of placebo effects upon learning in markets for health care.

Amitabh Chandra, PhD, is Professor of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Govern­ment. Chandra is a Faculty Research Fellow at the IZA Institute in Bonn, Germany, and at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His current research focuses on the effect of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act on labor markets, the role of medical malpractice litigation on the delivery of health care, and the economics of neonatal health and cardiovascular care.

Michael Chernew, PhD, is Professor of Health Care Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. One major area of Chernew’s research focuses on assessing the impact of managed care on the health care marketplace, with an emphasis on examining the impact of managed care on health care cost growth and on the use of medical technology. Other research has examined determinants of patient choice of hospital and the impact of health plan performance measures on employee and employer selection of health plans.

Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is Professor of Medical Sociology, Depart­ment of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School; Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; and an attending physician in the Depart­ment of Medicine at the Harvard-affiliated Mt. Auburn Hospital. Christakis’ research interests have focused on ways to enhance the care of terminally ill patients, including work on clinical and socioeconomic factors that influence the timing of the transition from curative to palliative care and work on whether and how physicians formulate and commu­nicate prognoses (e.g., in his book, Death Foretold: Prophecy and Prognosis in Medical Care). His more recent work focuses on the health benefits of marriage and the cascading impact of illness within social networks, on the salubrious effect of social capital, and on iatrogenesis.

I. Glenn Cohen, JD is Assistant Professor of Law, Harvard Law School. Cohen’s primary research interests are in bioethics and health law. He is currently working on projects relating to reproductive technology and medical tourism, but his past work has included projects on end of life decision-making, FDA regulation, research ethics, and commodification.

David M. Cutler, PhD, is Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. His interests are in the cost and financing of medical care, markets for health insurance, measuring and assessing changes in health, and the design of public health programs.

Norman Daniels, PhD, is Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Depart­ment of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. His research is on justice and health policy, with particular emphasis on the distribution of health care resources and fair process in such decisions, fairness in the design of health systems and health reforms, and equity in population health.

Amy C. Edmondson, PhD, is Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School. Edmondson’s research examines leadership influences on learning, collaboration and innovation in teams and organizations. Her field-based approach includes research in contexts ranging from health care delivery and manufacturing to space exploration. One stream of her work has shown effects of leadership behavior and a safe psychological climate on patient safety in hospitals. Another stream investigates manage­ment team practices that promote effective decision-making. She also has studied leader­ship enablers of organizational learning, more generally.

Arnold M. Epstein, MD, MA, is John H. Foster Professor of Health Policy and Manage­ment and Chair, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. Epstein’s research interests focus on access and quality of care especially for disadvantaged populations. He is best known for documenting differences in patterns of care for differing socio-economic groups and their implications. In recent years, he has been devoting increasing effort to studying aspects of publicly reported quality performance measures and Medicaid policy.

Majid Ezzati, PhD, is Associate Professor of International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. Ezzati’s research interests center around understanding the determinants of, and risk factors for, health and disease at the population level, especially as they change through technological innovation and tech­nology management. His current research focuses on two main areas: 1) the relationship between energy technology, air pollution, and health in developing countries; and 2) major health risk factors and their role in current and future disease burden globally or in specific countries and regions.

Erica Field, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her primary fields of interest are development and labor economics, with a regional focus on Latin America. Her past research has examined the household welfare effects of urban land titling programs in developing countries, including the impact of tenure security on labor supply, credit access and fertility. Her current research examines the link between health investments and economic mobility.

Richard G. Frank, PhD, is Margaret T. Morris Professor of Health Economics, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. His interests are in the economics of mental health care, the economics of the phar­maceutical industry, and the organization and financing of physician group practices.

G. Scott Gazelle, MD, PhD, is Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard School of Public Health. In addition, Gazelle is Director of the Institute for Technology Assessment at Massa­chusetts General Hospital, Director of Partners Radiology, and Director of the Dana-Farber/ Harvard Cancer Center Program in Cancer Outcomes Research Training. His research focuses on evaluating the benefits, costs, and appropriate use of new medical technologies.

Sue J. Goldie, MD, MPH, is Roger Irving Lee Professor of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Goldie’s research focuses on developing and validating comput­er-based models linking the basic biology of a disease and its epidemiology to population-based outcomes. She uses these models within a decision analytic framework to synthesize data, identify key knowledge gaps, and eval­uate the clinical benefits, public health impact, and cost-effectiveness of alternative preventive and treatment interventions. Her focus in the last several years has been on three viruses of major public health importance: human papil­lomavirus, human immunodeficiency virus, and hepatitis.

David C. Grabowski, PhD, is Associate Professor of Health Care Policy, Depart­ment of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. Grabowski’s research focuses on the economics of aging and health care regula­tion, with a particular interest in the area of long-term care. He has published a series of papers examining the economic incentives influencing nursing home quality. Specifi­cally, his work has explored the effects of state Medicaid payment policies, certificate-of-need laws, asymmetric information, and labor prices toward explaining low-quality nursing home care.

James K. Hammitt, ScM, MPP, PhD, is Professor of Economics and Decision Sciences, Department of Health Policy and Manage­ment, and Director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, Harvard School of Public Health. His research concerns the develop­ment and application of quantitative meth­ods—including benefit-cost, decision, and risk analysis—to health and environmental policy. Topics include management of long-term environmental issues with important scientific uncertainties, such as global climate change and stratospheric-ozone depletion, evalua­tion of ancillary benefits and countervailing risks associated with risk-control measures, and characterization of social preferences over health and environmental risks using revealed-preference, contingent-valuation, and health-utility methods.

Robert S. Huckman, PhD, is Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, and Faculty Research Fellow in the health care program of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on the linkages between organizational characteristics, technological choice, and oper­ating performance, with an emphasis on the health care industry.

Haiden A. Huskamp, PhD, is Associate Professor of Health Care Policy, Depart­ment of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses primarily on the economics of mental health and substance abuse treatment, the economics of the phar­maceutical industry, and the financing of end-of-life care services She is a recipient of a Career Development Award focused on the economics of psychotropic drugs from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Guido W. Imbens, PhD, is Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Imbens’ research focuses on econometric and statistical methods for the evaluation of social programs and causal inference, including matching methods and instrumental variables.

Ashish Jha, MD, MPH, is Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management, Depart­ment of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health; Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Associate Physician, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; and Special Advisor for Quality, Veterans Health Administration. Jha’s research focuses on: quality of care provided by health care systems, with a focus on health care disparities as a marker of poor care; informa­tion technology among other tools as potential solutions for reducing medical errors and disparities while improving over-all quality; and organizations that provide care for minori­ties and underserved populations and the role clinical information systems can play in improving their care. Jha is the 2008 recipient of the Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award from AcademyHealth for outstanding promise in the field of health services research.

Nancy Kane, DBA, is Professor of Manage­ment, Department of Health Policy and Management, and Associate Dean for Educa­tional Programs, Harvard School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the financial and managerial performance of healthcare organizations. Recent and ongoing projects include analysis of individual health insurance markets at the state level – how insurers and consumers behave, and policy implications; assessment of the financial performance of hospitals in a local market area in which a nonprofit hospital converts to investor-owned status; development of quantifiable measures of charitable activity, tax-exempt value, and financial performance of health care organiza­tions; case studies of the feasibility of imple­menting managed care tools in a variety of international settings.

Jane Kim, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Health Decision Science, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Kim’s research focuses on the development and application of mathematical modeling methods to evaluate health policy issues related to women’s health. She has developed and used models to perform cost-effectiveness analyses of cervical cancer screening strategies in the US, Europe, Hong Kong, and less developed regions.

Gary King, MA, PhD, is David Florence Professor of Government, Department of Government, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Director of The Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard. His research inter­ests include work on legislative redistricting, ecological inference, mortality studies, and methods for achieving cross-cultural compa­rability in survey research. His statistical methods and software are used extensively in academia, government, consulting, and private industry.

Michael Kremer, PhD, is Gates Professor of Developing Societies, Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is an expert on AIDS and infectious diseases in developing countries, economics of devel­oping countries, education and development, and mechanisms for encouraging research and development. His noted research on develop­ment includes: a study of a 1992-97 program through which the government of Colombia provided school vouchers to 100,000 students; preventing/eliminating debt accumulation by dictators in developing countries; ways of encouraging private research and development in tropical agriculture; and ways of encour­aging research and development on AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria vaccines.

Bruce E. Landon, MD, MBA, is Associate Professor of Health Care Policy, Depart­ment of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Landon’s research involves assessing the impact of different characteristics of physician and health care organizations, ranging from health plans to physician group practices, on the provision of health care services; care for patients with HIV; and the experiences of state Medicaid agencies with managed care.

Peter V. Marsden, PhD, is Professor of Soci­ology, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. His research interests are centered on social organization, especially formal organizations and social networks. He has ongoing interests in social methodology and in the sociology of medicine. Research projects include investigation of organizational sampling frames, the human resource policies and practices of US work establishments, and projects on social network analysis linked to the General Social Survey. He was a co-inves­tigator on two studies of organizational aspects of medical care, one on quality improvement initiatives in HIV care, the other on patterns of informal consultation within a clinic.

Marie C. McCormick, MD, ScD, is Sumner and Esther Feldberg Professor of Maternal and Child Health, Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, and Professor of Pediat­rics, Harvard Medical School. Her research involves epidemiologic and health services research investigations in the areas related to infant mortality and the outcomes of high-risk neonates. Current projects are in the following areas: outcomes of infants experiencing neonatal complications like low birth weight, and interventions potentially ameliorating adverse outcomes; the evaluation of programs designed to improve the health of families and children; and maternal health and prematurity.

Thomas G. McGuire, PhD, is Professor of Health Economics, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. McGuire’s research focuses on the design and impact of health care payment systems, the economics of health care disparities, and the economics of mental health policy. He has contributed to the theory of physician, hospital, and health plan payment. His current research includes application of theoretical and empirical methods from labor economics to the area of health care disparities. He has analyzed the reasons behind “discrimination” by doctors, and conducted empirical research to identify the contribution of the various mechanisms behind health care disparities.

Barbara J. McNeil, MD, PhD, is Ridley Watts Professor and Chair, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School. McNeil’s research activities have focused on several areas, most notably tech­nology assessment and quality of care. Her most recent work includes two large studies supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The first focused on a comparison of quality of care for veterans with cardiac disease with the care provided to Medicare beneficia­ries seen in private settings. Its report led to the introduction of many changes in the care of veterans with cardiac disease. As a result of that study, she and her colleagues are currently performing a similar study on cancer care. McNeil also works closely with the national Blue Cross Blue Shield Association in several areas related to the identification and dissemi­nation of approaches to improving either the quality or the efficiency of care in plans across the country.

J. Michael McWilliams, MD, PhD, is Assis­tant Professor of Health Care Policy and of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and an associate physician in the Division of General Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. McWilliams’s research focuses on access to care, quality of care, health care costs, and health disparities among aging adults with chronic conditions. In his recent work, he has studied the impact of Medicare coverage on the health of previously uninsured adults, the use of health services by previously uninsured Medicare beneficiaries, the effects of health insurance coverage on mortality among near-elderly adults, racial and ethnic trends in control of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and the effects of Medicare coverage on dispar­ities in disease control.

Michelle Mello, JD, MPhil, PhD, is Professor of Law and Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Mello conducts empirical research into issues at the intersec­tion of law, ethics, and health policy. Current and recent projects include an investigation of the impact of the medical malpractice crisis on physician supply in Pennsylvania; a study of factors contributing to medical errors in the hospital; a study of legal relationships between academic investigators and industry sponsors of clinical trials; and a feasibility study of an administrative “no-fault” system of compen­sating medical injuries. Mello is also studying ethical issues confronting the pharmaceutical industry as a Greenwall Faculty Scholar. In 2006, she was the recipient of the Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award from Acade­myHealth for outstanding promise in the field of health services research.

Carl N. Morris, PhD, MS, is Professor of Statistics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Health Care Policy, Depart­ment of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. His research interests include hierar­chical modeling and empirical Bayes methods, exponential families, experimental design and social experiments, Bayesian and likelihood theory, multivariate data analysis, sampling theory, interface between statistical theory and applications, statistical theory in sports and competition, and statistics for health care and health services.

Joseph P. Newhouse, PhD, is John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is chair of the Interfaculty Initiative in Health Policy and the Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy. Newhouse is best known for his work on the financing and organization of medical care services. His recent research topics include risk adjustment for reimbursement of health plans and health providers and the impact of managed care on use of services, cost, and quality of care, as well as improved medical care price indices and the economics of the Medicaid tobacco settlement.

Sharon-Lise Normand, PhD, is Professor of Health Care Policy (Biostatistics), Depart­ment of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School and Professor in the Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the develop­ment of statistical methods for health services research, primarily using Bayesian approaches to problem solving, including assessment of quality of care, methods for causal inference, provider profiling, meta-analysis, and latent variable modeling. She has developed a long line of research on methods for the analysis of patterns of treatment and quality of care for patients with cardiovascular disease and with mental disorders.

Gary P. Pisano, PhD, is Harrie E. Figgie Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. Pisano’s research focuses on the development, adoption and manage­ment of new medical technologies. He has done research on the biotechnology, pharma­ceutical, and medical device industries. His current research examines the organizational and management factors influencing learning curves in the adoption of minimally invasive cardiac surgery procedures. He is also engaged in researching the ways in which the quality and cost of health care can be improved through improved design and management of health care delivery systems.

Lisa A. Prosser, MS, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Department of Ambulatory Care and Preven­tion, Harvard Medical School. Prosser’s major research interests are economic evaluations of health interventions and methods for valuing changes in health. Her current research focuses on policy-relevant topics concerning the cost-effectiveness of childhood interventions, such as a study of newborn screening for metabolic disorders that will assess how the inclusion of stress and anxiety associated with false positive tests affects the cost-effectiveness of expanded newborn screening programs.

Meredith B. Rosenthal, PhD, is Associate Professor of Health Economics and Policy, Department of Health Policy and Manage­ment, Harvard School of Public Health. Rosenthal’s principal research interests revolve around economic incentives that influence consumer and provider health care decisions. She is currently working on a series of related projects that examine evolving trends in the health insurance market, including the use of pay-for-performance, tiered networks, and consumer-directed health plans.

Donald B. Rubin, MS, PhD, is John L. Loeb Professor of Statistics and Chair, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He has two long-standing and active research projects that are of direct relevance to the Interfaculty Initiative in Health Policy. The first involves developing advanced statistical methods based on imbedding econometric “instrumental variables” insights within the potential outcomes framework for causal infer­ence (called by Holland and others the “Rubin Causal Model”); these techniques are espe­cially relevant to situations that can be consid­ered conceptually equivalent to randomized trials with noncompliance. The second project involves developing extensions of propensity score methodology for matched sampling and subclassification adjustment in observational studies, techniques that, since their intro­duction by Rosenbaum and Rubin in 1983, have become standard tools for inference in nonrandomized medical studies.

Joshua Salomon, PhD, is Associate Professor of International Health, Department of Popu­lation and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. Salomon’s research focuses on priority-setting in global health, within three main substantive areas: measure­ment and valuation of population health; modeling and forecasting of health outcomes and disease burden; and evaluation of the potential impact and cost-effectiveness of current and future health interventions. He is an investigator on projects relating to summary measures of population health; modeling HIV/AIDS epidemics and interven­tions for prevention and treatment; modeling disease outcomes for population health moni­toring and surveillance; and evaluating the potential impact and cost effectiveness of new vaccines. He also leads a collaborative project with the Mexican Ministry of Health on priority setting for interventions in the context of health reform.

Stephen B. Soumerai, MS, ScD, is Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Depart­ment of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Soumerai directs the Drug Policy Research Program, focused on pharmaceutical use and the quality and outcomes of health care. He is known for his research on methods of improving clinicians’ drug prescribing practices and other health care decisions; and on the effects of drug coverage and cost-containment policies on the quality, costs and outcomes of health care in vulnerable populations, such as chronically ill elderly. His current work includes studies of: cost-related underuse of medications among the elderly; the effects of a statewide triplicate prescription (physician surveillance) policy for benzodiaz­epines on the appropriateness and outcomes of sedative-hypnotic use; and the effects of Medicaid policies restricting access to atypical antipsychotic drugs on the quality of care for patients with schizophrenia.

David G. Stevenson, MS, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Health Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. Stevenson’s primary research interests are aging, disability, and long-term care. His recent work has focused on nursing home quality of care. His research addresses the recent rise in nursing home litigation, the potential value of consumer complaints data in assessing quality of care, and the use of public reporting to create a market for nursing home quality. Other ongoing research examines the use of nursing home adverse incident reports for facility-level quality improvement and for state-level quality assurance activities.

Katherine Swartz, MS, PhD, is Professor of Health Economics and Policy, Depart­ment of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. She is also Director of Graduate Studies for the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy. Her current research interests focus on the popula­tion without health insurance and efforts to increase access to health care coverage; reasons for and ways to control episodes of care that involve extremely-high expenditures; and how we might pay for expanded health insur­ance coverage. Swartz also is interested in the impact of the mapping of the human genome and its implications for health insurance; in particular, what types of genetic illnesses and conditions will be no longer insurable by private insurance companies, and the role that government may have in providing financing of new genetic therapies and tests.

Milton C. Weinstein, PhD, is Henry J. Kaiser Professor of Health Policy and Management, Department of Health Policy and Manage­ment and Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; and Director of the Program on Economic Evaluation of Medical Technology. He is best known for his research on cost-effectiveness of medical practices and for developing methods of economic evaluation and decision analysis in health care. He is currently involved in research projects relating to testing and treatment for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, screening for lung cancer, and treatment of cardiovascular risk factors in the US and devel­oping countries.

Alan M. Zaslavsky, MS, PhD, is Professor of Health Care Policy (Statistics), Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. His methodological research interests include surveys, census methodology, microsimulation models, missing data, hierarchical modeling, small-area estimation, and applied Bayesian methodology. His health services research focuses primarily on developing methodology for quality measurement of health plans and other units and understanding the implica­tions of these quality measurements.

Richard J. Zeckhauser, PhD, is Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy, John F. Kennedy School of Govern­ment. Many of his policy investigations explore ways to promote the health of human beings, to help markets work more effectively, and to foster informed and appropriate choices by individuals and government agencies. Much of his conceptual research examines possibilities for democratic, decentralized allocation procedures. His current research projects are directed at pharmaceutical pricing, deception, and reputations, bad apples and bad bets in social policy, trust in Islamic and Western nations, information economics and Italian Renaissance art, the blending of nego­tiations and auctions, and collaborative under­takings between the public and private sectors. 

Dissertation Titles Graduates’ Positions

The PhD Program in Health Policy has an excellent record of graduate placement. Selected graduates’ dissertation titles and their current positions are listed here.

Decision Sciences

“Cost-Effectiveness of Imaging and Surgery in Patients with Colorectal Cancer Liver Metas­tases,” 1999. Current position: Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School; Professor, Department of Health Policy and Manage­ment, Harvard School of Public Health; Director, Partners Radiology; Director, Insti­tute for Technological Assessment, Massachu­setts General Hospital

“Evaluating Preferences for Health Risks,” 2000. Current position: Associate Professor, Department of Health Policy and Administra­tion, Biostatistics and Epidemiology, College of Public Health, University of Georgia

“Empirical Approaches to Modeling HIV and Hepatitis C,” 2001. Current position: Associate Professor of International Health, Depart­ment of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health

“The Cost-Effectiveness of Early Antiretroviral Therapy for HIV-Infected Adults,” 2001. Current position: Associate Professor of Public Health and Chief, Division of Health Policy, Department of Public Health, Weill Medical College of Cornell University

“Decision Analysis in the Evaluation of Breast Cancer Treatment,” 2003. Current position: Assistant Outcomes Research Scientist, Health Outcomes Group, Department of Epidemi­ology and Biostatistics, Memorial Sloan-Ket­tering Cancer Center

“Infectious Disease Policy in the Era of Anti­biotic Drug Resistance: Decision Analytic and Historical Perspective,” 2004. Current position: Policy Researcher, RAND Corporation

“Decision-analytic Approaches to Evaluating Prevention Policy Alternatives,” 2008. Current position: Assistant Professor of Medicine, School of Medicine, Stanford University

Economics

“Risk Sharing in Managed Care,” 1998. Current position: Associate Professor of Health Economics and Policy, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health

“Economic Analyses of Medicare HMOs,” 1999. Current position: Assistant Director, Economic and Policy Research Group, World­wide Public Affairs and Policy, Pfizer, Inc.

“Measuring Productivity and Quality in Mental Health Care,” 2000. Current position: Associate Professor, Department of Epide­miology and Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine

“The Effect of Market Reforms and Owner­ship Choice on the Quality of Care in Hospitals,” 2001. Current position: Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School

“The Economics of Long-Term Care Deci­sion-Making Among the Elderly,” 2002. Current position: Principal Analyst, Health and Human Resources Division, Congressional Budget Office

“Empirical Essays on Major Forces in Health, Population, and Development,” 2005. Current position: Assistant Professor of Medicine, School of Medicine, Stanford University

“An Empirical Evaluation of the Kyrgyz Health Reform: Does It Work for the Poor?” 2007. Current position: Health Financing Specialist, Central Eastern Europe and Central Asia, World Health Organization EURO

Ethics

“Corporate Form of Hospitals: Behavior and Obligations,” 2002. Current position: Louis and Myrtle Moskowitz Research Professor of Business and Law, University of Michigan Law School

“The Consumer’s Role in Nursing Home Quality,” 2004. Current position: Assistant Professor of Health Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School

“The Regulation of Individual Autonomy in Medical Decision-Making,” 2008. Current position: Associate Professor of Law, Univer­sity of California, Hastings College of the Law

Evaluative Science and Statistics

“An Inquiry into the Links between Labor-Market Experiences and Health,” 1997. Current position: Associate Professor, Depart­ment of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatis­tics, McMaster University; Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Transfer and Exchange

“How Tribes Choose Between Tribal and Indian Health Service Management of Health Care Resource; Drug Coverage and Drug Use by Medicare Beneficiaries; Bias in Measures of Guideline Adherence,” 1999. Current posi­tion: Research Scientist, Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente

“Firearms: Storage and Use at Home and Use in Suicides by Children,” 2001. Current position: Research Associate, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health; Associate Director, Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center and Co-Director, National Violent Injury Statistics System, Harvard School of Public Health

“Evaluating Infant Experience Under Medicaid Managed Care,” 2003. Current posi­tion: Health Researcher, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

“A Cost and Outcomes Analysis of Emer­gency Transport, Inter-Hospital Transfer and Hospital Expansion Policies in Cardiac Care,” 2006. Current position: Assistant Professor of Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine

Management

“Organizational Learning in Health Care: Insights from a Multi-Method Study of Quality Improvement Collaboratives,” 2007. Current position: Assistant Professor, Division of Health Policy and Administration, Yale University School of Medicine and School of Public Health; Assistant Professor, Yale University School of Management

“Safety Climate in US Hospitals: Its Measure­ment, Variation, and Relationship to Organi­zational Safety Performance,” 2008. Current position: Assistant Professor of Health Care Management and Policy, Harvard School of Public Health 

Medical Sociology 

“End Stage Renal Disease: Factors Affecting Patient’s Treatment and Care Assessments,” 2006. Current position: Senior Policy Analyst, Race/Ethnicity and Health Care and Director, Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program, Kaiser Family Foundation

“Medicare Beneficiaries and Market Varia­tions in Service Use, Quality of Care, and Plan Choice,” 2008. Current position: Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Administration, Department of Health Policy and Administra­tion, Pennsylvania State University

Political Analysis

“Political Institutions, Participation and Media Evaluations: Influence on Health Care Policy,” 1995. Current position: Vice President and Director of Public Opinion and Media Research, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

“Consumer’s Values on Health Care Services,” 2003. Current position: Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, College of Social Science, Ewha Women’s University, Korea

“Obesity Policy and the Public,” 2007. Current position: Assistant Professor, Depart­ment of Health Policy and Management and Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health