Health Policy

Abigail Barker is the faculty lead for data and methods at the Center for Health Economics and Policy at the Institute for Public Health. Her role includes helping social science and clinical researchers add cost and cost-effectiveness analyses to their work to increase policy relevance, as well as creating data visualizations to allow stakeholders to interactively understand the tradeoffs of various health policy choices.

Derek Brown’s research focuses on costs, access to care, quality, and disparities among Medicaid populations—including physician payment, housing instability, and child maltreatment. He also uses discrete choice experiments to analyze preferences for health care and outcomes, such as screening and vaccination. His goal with this work is to improve valuation of health outcomes and policies and to promote better economic evaluation of public health policies.

Dr. Chang is an applied econometrician and a health economist. Dr. Chang’s research focuses on health and economic consequences of obesity and surgical treatments of obesity. Her research uses economic and econometric/statistical modeling to evaluate program and treatment effects. Dr. Chang’s research areas include treatment effect and policy evaluation; cost-effectiveness analysis; meta-analysis; and comparative effectiveness.

Todd Combs' research interests include health and social policy, dissemination and implementation science, and systems science. Much of his research focuses on policies that affect the built environment to promote behavioral change.  Combs currently leads or works on several projects, including:  Advancing Science & Practice in the Retail Environment (ASPiRE), which uses agent-based modeling to test the potential impact of retail tobacco policies; and the evaluation of the Washington University Institute for Clinical & Translational Sciences, which focuses on the benefits of membership and collaboration in the large-scale research initiative.

Elizabeth Dodson researches ways in which policy can facilitate healthy decision-making around physical activity and obesity prevention. Her work examines the effectiveness of policies in specific settings (e.g., schools, worksites) to increase physical activity. She also studies the policy process, including the use of research evidence by policymakers and the most effective ways to communicate research evidence to policymakers.

Amy Eyler conducts research to advance the study of policies related to physical activity and obesity, as well as broader policy issues in public health. In addition to serving as deputy director of the Prevention Research Center in St. Louis, she co-directs the Policies for Action Child Health Weight Hub. This research hub is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to identify policies, laws, and regulations to build a culture of health, focusing on the implementation of nutrition and physical activity policies.

Debra Haire-Joshu is an internationally renowned scholar of health behavior who develops population-wide interventions to reduce obesity and prevent diabetes among underserved women and children. She holds a joint appointment in the Washington University School of Medicine, and directs the Center for Obesity Prevention and Policy Research (COPPR) and the Washington University Center for Diabetes Translation Research (WU-CDTR).

Global cardiovascular implementation science, health system, and policy research, including related to World Health Organization Best Buys for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases, to improve cardiovascular health and health care toward achieving to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Kim Johnson is a cancer epidemiologist with over a decade of experience conducting cancer research. Her experience includes designing and managing projects, collecting and organizing data, conducting analyses using a number of different statistical tools, supervising staff, and mentoring students/trainees across levels (undergraduate, masters-level, PhD, MD and residents) from project conception to completion. She has spent much of her research career focused on the etiology of pediatric cancer in both the general and high-risk (Neurofibromatosis Type 1) populations. She has more recently become engaged in research relating to disparities in access to care among children and young adults diagnosed with cancer.

Dr. Joynt Maddox’s specific research interests include improving the measurement of the quality and efficiency of physicians, hospitals, and health systems; understanding the impact of policy interventions on health care, with a focus on value-based and alternative payment models; and reducing disparities in care, with a focus on vulnerable populations including racial and ethnic minorities, individuals living in poverty, individuals with disabilities, frail elders, and those in rural areas.

Matthew Kreuter is a leading national public health expert in the field of health communications. He currently serves as a member of the Faculty Advisory Council of the Institute for Public Health at Washington University, and he holds a secondary appointment at Washington University's School of Medicine. As founder and senior scientist of the Health Communication Research Laboratory, Kreuter has developed and evaluated a wide range of health communications programs to promote health, modify behavior, and prevent and manage disease.

Douglas Luke is a leading researcher in the areas of public health policy, systems science and tobacco control. Luke directs work focused primarily on the evaluation, dissemination and implementation of evidence-based public health policies. He has written books on multilevel modeling and network analysis. Under Luke's leadership, the Center for Public Health Systems Science has used network analysis to study diffusion of scientific innovations, to model the formation of organizational collaborations, and to study the relationship of mentoring to future scientific collaboration.

Timothy McBride is an influential health policy analyst and leading health economist shaping the national agenda in health insurance, health reform, rural health care, Medicare and Medicaid policy, health economics, and access to health care. McBride studies the effects of health reform at the state and national levels, the uninsured, diabetes policy, Medicare Advantage, and long-term entitlement reform. In addition to several dozen scholarly publications, he produced the book "Transdisciplinary Public Health: Education, Research and Practice" co-edited with Debra Haire-Joshu, as well as a collection of reports, white papers and other policy products that have had an important impact on the national policy debate.

Caitlin McMurtry (she/they) combines theories and methods from public health, economics, and political science to examine the politics of health in the United States. Their current research focuses on the magnitude and origins of political polarization during disease outbreaks, the causes and consequences of firearm deregulation, experiences of discrimination among Asian Americans, and the role of state ballot initiatives in health policy. Broadly, they aim to understand how public opinion and political processes affect health and inequity (and vice versa) in the U.S.

Sarah Moreland-Russell’s research focuses on health policy analysis and evaluation, specifically regarding tobacco control and obesity prevention, organizational and systems science and evaluation, and dissemination and implementation of public health policies. Her work has made contributions to the need for local-level policy adoption, strategies for disseminating results for more effective implementation of evidence-based policy, and the evaluation of public health programs.

Morgan Shields’ researches the quality and accountability of behavioral healthcare. Her work seeks to identify implementation strategies to improve the use of evidence-based practices, with a focus on patient-centered care and equity. She is particularly focused on identifying policies (e.g., payment, regulations) to motivate and support quality improvement. Shields is one of few people studying the quality of inpatient psychiatry. Her research identifying disparities in quality performance at the Veterans Health Administration led to internal investigations by the Deputy Under Secretary for Health and Organizational Excellence.