Haiden A. Huskamp, PhD

Bio

Haiden Huskamp, Ph.D., is a health economist and the Henry J. Kaiser Professor of Health Care Policy.  Dr. Huskamp has three primary areas of research: 1) mental health and substance use disorder policy; 2) prescription drug policy; and 3) the financing and utilization of end-of-life care services. She also serves as Director of Harvard’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) T32 Pre- and Post-doctoral Training Program in Mental Health Policy. 

Dr. Huskamp is Multi-Principal Investigator (MPI) on an R01 funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) assessing the use of telemedicine for the treatment of opioid use disorder and on an R01 funded by NIMH on telemedicine for the treatment of mental illness. She also serves as MPI on an R01 funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) on the prescribing and use of medications that treat alcohol use disorder.  Dr. Huskamp serves as Co-director of the Brandeis/Harvard SPIRE Center (SUD Systems Performance Improvement Research and Engagement) Center, a NIDA-funded P30 center. She previously served as MPI for an R01 funded by NIMH focused on factors that influence physician adoption and use of antipsychotic medications and an R01 funded by NIDA assessing the effects of new payment and delivery models on substance use disorder treatment. She has published numerous papers on the impact of managed care for behavioral health services on utilization patterns, costs, and quality of care and on the impact of parity in insurance coverage for behavioral health services. Dr. Huskamp previously served as a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Developing Evidence-Based Standards for Psychosocial Interventions for Mental Disorders. 

Dr. Huskamp is an expert on the impact of pharmacy management tools used to control prescription drug costs on drug utilization, cost, and quality of care.  She has conducted a number of studies examining the link between prescription drug benefit design, patient out-of-pocket costs, and medication adherence for individuals who use high-cost medications. Through a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, Dr. Huskamp previously examined the social costs and benefits of newer psychotropic drugs to assess their social value and identify ways that the value of psychotropic drug spending can be increased.  She previously served as MPI on a NIMH-funded U01 grant examining characteristics of provider organizations that influence the diffusion of new technologies, including prescription drugs.  Dr. Huskamp served as a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Accelerating Rare Diseases Research and Orphan Products Development.

Dr. Huskamp’s research on end-of-life care has examined the changing characteristics of the hospice industry and the effects of industry changes on the provision of end-of-life care, the timing of discussions about hospice care that occur between physicians and patients with advanced illness, and variation in hospice costs across hospice users.  She served as a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Care for Children Who Die and Their Families and a member of the National Academy of Medicine Roundtable on Quality Care for People with Serious Illness.

Working Papers

Technical Memo on Coverage Expansion and Low-Income, Reproductive-Age Women

CV

Curriculum Vitae

Administrative Contact

hcpadmin@hcp.med.harvard.edu