Training Program in Mental Health Policy

Haiden Huskamp, Ph.D., a health economist and mental health services researcher, is the Henry J. Kaiser Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Her research on mental health policy and economics has informed many important policy debates over the past 25 years. A former pre-doctoral trainee in this program, she has obtained R01s from NIMH, NIDA, NIAAA, and NIA as well as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research. Recent projects have focused on the role of telehealth in mental health treatment, the impact of new payment and delivery models on people with mental illness, factors influencing diffusion of new mental health treatments, efforts to improve health and justice outcomes for individuals with mental illness and criminal justice involvement, and effects of insurance coverage expansions on mental health service use and quality of care. She has mentored numerous pre- and post-doctoral trainees in mental health policy since joining the program faculty in 2001.

Benjamin Lê Cook, Ph.D., is Director of the Health Equity Research Lab at Cambridge Health Alliance and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at HMS. His research interests are in improving methods of measuring and understanding underlying pathways of mental health care disparities and applying these methods to evaluate the impact of clinical and policy reform on disparities in care. He uses mixed methods and analyzes comprehensive area- and individual-level socio-ecological datasets integrated across electronic health record (EHR) data; insurance claims; and school, police, corrections, and other social service system data. Dr. Cook, a former pre-doctoral trainee in the Training Program, has obtained numerous NIMH, NIMHD, AHRQ, and NCI R01s; is PI of a NIMH P50 Alacrity Center to prevent mental illness among youth from minoritized racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds; and has mentored numerous pre- and post-doctoral trainees.

Alisa Busch, M.D., M.S., a psychiatrist, clinical informaticist, and mental health policy and services researcher, is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and of Health Care Policy at HMS. She is also the Mass General Brigham Associate Chief Medical Information Officer for McLean Hospital and system Behavioral and Mental Health. She obtained a NIMH K award on examining the quality of care for bipolar disorder and went on to become an expert on the use of claims and EHR data to study utilization and quality of care for individuals with mental illness. Dr. Busch, a former post-doctoral trainee in the program has collaborated extensively on R01s from NIMH, NIDA, and NIAAA. She serves as co-leader of the mental health policy seminar and has served as training co-director since 2021. She has mentored numerous pre- and post-doctoral trainees.

Sharon-Lise Normand, Ph.D. is the S. James Adelstein Professor of Health Policy (Biostatistics) in the Department of Health Care Policy at HMS and Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her methodological research focuses on Bayesian biostatistics with emphasis on developing statistical methods for health services and outcomes research including assessment of quality of care, health provider profiling, and causal inference with high-dimensional data. She has developed a long line of research on methods for the analysis of patterns of treatment and quality of care for patients with mental illness. She has been PI on several NIH-funded grants, including one with Dr. Huskamp on methods for studying diffusion of new psychiatric treatments and one from NIMHD on disparities in treatment quality for those with serious mental illness. She is currently the PI of a NIMH grant to develop causal methods for assessing the effectiveness of treatments among elderly persons with severe mental illnesses (with Dr. Horvitz-Lennon) and a Co-Investigator on an ALACRITY grant to study suicide and an R01 to assess value-based purchasing in mental health care (both with Drs. Cook and Horvitz-Lennon). Dr. Normand has mentored many pre- and post-doctoral fellows at the intersection of mental health, epidemiology, and statistics.

In addition to Drs. Huskamp, Cook, Busch, and Normand, the Training Program includes an accomplished faculty across all ranks (Assistant, Associate, and full Professor) with a diverse set of training and skills, a strong record of scholarship and research support from the NIMH and other key funders, a broad set of research interests within mental health policy, and a commitment to mentoring junior researchers. 

Margarita Alegría, Ph.D., is Chief of the Disparities Research Unit (DRU) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Harry G. Lehnert, Jr. and Lucille F. Cyr Lehnert Endowed Chair at the MGH Research Institute 

Nicole Benson, M.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Part Time, at HMS, is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, clinical informaticist, and mental health policy and services researcher. 

Michael Chernew, Ph.D., is the Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Care Policy and Director of the Healthcare Markets and Regulation Lab at HMS in the Department of HCP. 

Alyna Chien, M.D., M.S., a pediatrician and health services researcher, is Associate Professor of Pediatrics at HMS. 

Jessica Cohen, Ph.D., Professor of Health Economics in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is a health and behavioral economist whose research applies experimental and quasi-experimental methods to evaluate the impact of maternal and child health programs and policies. 

David Cutler, Ph.D., is the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Chair of the Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy. 

Vicki Fung, Ph.D., is Investigator in the MGH Mongan Institute and Associate Professor at HMS and examines the impact of health policy for disadvantaged populations, including people with severe mental illness. 

David Grabowski, Ph.D., is Professor of Health Care Policy at HMS, and examines the economics of aging. 

Shelly Greenfield, M.D., M.P.H., a psychiatrist and mental health services researcher, is Professor of Psychiatry at HMS, the Kristine M. Trustey Endowed Chair of Psychiatry at McLean Hospital, and chair of the NIDA Clinical Trial Network’s Gender Special Interest Group. 

Marcela Horvitz-Lennon, M.D., M.P.H., is Senior Physician Scientist at RAND Corporation, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at HMS, and a practicing psychiatrist at Cambridge Health Alliance. Her research focuses on quality, value, and disparities in mental and physical health care received by adults with severe mental illnesses. 

John Hsu, M.D., M.B.A., is Director of the Program for Clinical Economics and Policy Analysis within the MGH Mongan Institute, Associate Professor of Health Care Policy and Medicine at HMS, and an internist. Dr. Hsu studies innovations in health care financing and delivery, and their effects on quality and efficiency using claims and EHR data. His current work studies the interplay between benefit design and delivery system integration, and much focuses on mental health policy.

Mary Beth Landrum, Ph.D., Professor of Health Care Policy (Biostatistics) at HMS, focuses on development and application of statistical methodology to answer key policy questions for the elderly and people with disabilities, including individuals with severe mental illness. This research has several related themes including models to summarize related measurements of quality or outcomes and the analysis of observational data to infer effectiveness of medical and policy interventions. 

Nicole Maestas, Ph.D., is the Margaret T. Morris Professor  and Chair of the Department of Health Care Policy (Economics) at Harvard Medical School and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, where she directs the Retirement and Disability Research Center. She studies the economics of disability insurance, labor markets, and health care systems. Her research examines how the health and disability insurance systems affect individual economic behaviors, such as labor supply and mental health care use. 

Luca Maini, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Health Care Policy at HMS, studies the economics of the pharmaceutical market, with a focus on how price regulation and competition affect spending and access. 

Margaret Anne McConnell, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Global Health and Economics at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, uses behavioral economic theory, experimental methods, and impact evaluation strategies in examining the choices and preferences of women during pregnancy, the postpartum period, and when raising young children; how mental health affects caregiving; and how interventions to better support mothers in key moments influence mental health.

Alex McDowell, Ph.D., R.N., is Assistant Professor of Medicine at HMS and an investigator at the MGH Mongan Institute. A former pre-doctoral trainee in the Training Program, Dr. McDowell studies the effect of health policies and health care system design on health inequities, with a focus on LGBTQ+ communities and mental health. 

Alecia McGregor, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Politics at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, examines the political determinants of health inequalities and health care access.  She examines the causes and consequences of urban hospital closures with a focus on the loss of psychiatric care, and their impact on racial and ethnic disparities in outcomes. Dr. McGregor uses multiple approaches, including geospatial mapping; quantitative, qualitative, and survey analysis; and analysis of administrative data. 

Ellen Meara, Ph.D., Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is an economist who models the effects of public policies and regulations on health care utilization and economic outcomes for people with mental illness. Dr. Meara is the Director of the Admissions Committee for the Ph.D. Program in Health Policy.

Joseph Newhouse, Ph.D., the John D. MacArthur Research Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard, is best known for his work on the financing and organization of health care services. His current research centers on managed care, risk adjustment, and improving health care price indices. 

Meredith Rosenthal, Ph.D., is the C. Boyden Gray Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (formerly Associate Dean for Diversity and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs). Her research focuses on policies that are designed to improve the affordability and value of health care, including changes in payment incentives, benefit design, and the provision of information and behavioral “nudges” to patients and providers. 

Michael Stein, J.D., Ph.D., is the Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School since 2005. Considered one of the world’s leading experts on disability law and policy, Dr. Stein participated in the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, actively consults with governments on their disability laws and policies, and has brought landmark disability rights litigation globally. 

Offer pre-doctoral trainees strong disciplinary-based training for application to the broad area of health policy. The disciplinary areas of concentration within the Ph.D. Program in Health Policy cover a range of skills necessary for effective policy analysis: a) decision sciences, b) economics, c) management, d) methods for policy research, and e) political analysis.

Provide pre-doctoral trainees with formal and informal experiences that will prepare them to incorporate into their research the features of mental illnesses, the institutional context within which mental health services are delivered, and the nature of public policy decision-making in the mental health arena.

Offer post-doctoral trainees with mentoring and research experiences in areas relevant to mental health policy and that augment their disciplinary training (either as social scientists or clinicians). In particular, we aim to match each post-doctoral fellow with research experiences that offer an in-depth exposure to mental health care institutions, clinical circumstances, public policy structures, and social science research methods to round out their research skills.