Tell us a little about you! (family, pets, interests)

I have two children (Ava and Zoe). I enjoy hiking, cooking, and watching not-so-high-quality television (Top Chef!). I’ve worked at O’Neill since 2015 and taught courses in the MSHM program since the first year (2020).

Short description of the course you teach in the MSHM curriculum. How does the course you teach bring value to future health leaders?

Within the MSHM program, I teach a course on Health Industry regulation. This course covers both why regulations exist as well as how firms respond to regulation. We focus on explicit health regulations related to physicians and other health care professionals, hospitals and other health care institutions, drugs and health care products, and public health. We will also focus on implicit health regulations. That is regulations that impact firms that are designed to improve health regardless of the industry of the firm.

The research area of interest

I am an economist who examines how regulations affect public health with interests in population health, environmental economics, substance abuse, and access to care.

Are you currently working on any large projects or research initiatives?

I’m almost done with a project that has been ten years in the making. It studies the role of modern medicine and the hospital in the dramatic improvement in health that occurred over the past century.  We do so by leveraging a combination of novel data and a unique quasi-experiment: a large-scale hospital modernization program introduced by The Duke Endowment in the early twentieth century. The Endowment helped communities build and expand hospitals, obtain state-of-art medical technology, attract qualified medical personnel, and refine management practices. We find that access to a Duke-supported hospital reduced infant mortality by 10%, saving one life for every $38,000 (2017 dollars) appropriated. Effects were larger for Black infants (16%) than for White infants (7%), reducing the Black-White infant mortality gap by one-third. We show that these effects persist into later life, causing a 9% reduction in mortality between the ages of 56 and 65. We further provide evidence on the mechanisms that enabled these effects, finding that Endowment-supported hospitals attracted higher-quality physicians and were better able to take advantage of new medical innovations.

What do you enjoy most about your work?

I enjoy solving problems with my colleagues and students.

What brought you to the O’Neill School?

The vibrant, policy-forward attitude is exemplified by the motto “lead for the greater good.”

What is the most helpful advice you’ve received?

When it comes to making sure you’re actually spending time on what you want to prioritize, I like Covey’s Big rocks analogy, thttps://resources.franklincovey.com/the-8th-habit/big-rocks-stephen-r-covey. In short, make sure you structure your time and efforts intentionally around things that are important to you. If you do not, your time may end up being spent on a lot of little things that are less important to you/your long-run goals.

Do you have any advice for MSHM students who are about to become transformational healthcare leaders?

Be active participants in your education.