Research

My research examines the impact of health and social policies on health care access, health outcomes, and health disparities, with a focus on low-income women, pregnant people, and families. I typically draw on observational and quasi-experimental methods to derive policy insights from large datasets, including population surveys, vital statistics, and administrative claims. This page highlights some of the past and ongoing themes of my research agenda. For an updated list of my publications, please see my Google Scholar page.

Postpartum Assessment of Health Survey (PAHS)

More than one-half of pregnancy-related deaths occur in the “fourth trimester” or year after birth. Major policy efforts, such as postpartum Medicaid extensions, are currently underway to improve health outcomes and health equity for postpartum people. To inform evidence-based policy and public health programming, I am leading the first multi-state data collection effort on postpartum health and social wellbeing. This project is conducted in collaboration with seven states and New York City and funded by Columbia World Projects and the National Institutes on Minority Health and Health Disparities. The 2020 PAHS data collection is complete and the 2024 PAHS data collection will launch in January 2025.. Learn more about the survey here.

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Ongoing Projects:

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Insurance Coverage and Access to Care for Reproductive-Age and Pregnant Women

Insurance coverage is critical for ensuring that women have access to preventive care, including but not limited to the period surrounding pregnancy. This body of work focuses on characterizing the patterns of health insurance coverage for reproductive-age women in the U.S. and evaluating the impacts of the Affordable Care Act on women and children.

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Ongoing Projects:

Improving Methods and Data for Health Policy Evaluation

Knowing what policies and programs work to improve health - and which don't - is critical for allocating scarce resources. This body of work aims to reduce uncertainty around common challenges in health policy evaluation and contribute to the development of 'gold standard' observational methods. This theme also includes methodological contributions on best practices for using existing administrative and claims data to study questions in maternal health.

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Ongoing Projects:

  • Advancing differences-in-differences methods for unpoolable data (Canadian Institutes for Health Research; PI: Strumpf E)

Prescription Drug Coverage and Pricing Policy

Prescription drugs represent a large and growing proportion of health care costs in the U.S. and other developed countries. My research on pharmaceutical policy focuses on (1) evaluating the impact of prescription drug coverage and pricing policies on access and costs, and (2) studying how prescription drug coverage policies develop, especially in relation to existing social programs.

Much of this work focuses on Canada, a country with a prescription drug coverage policy that is unique in the world: Canada is the only country with a universal health insurance scheme that excludes prescription medicines.

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