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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program is a two-year fellowship targeted to outstanding new PhDs in economics, political science, and sociology to advance their involvement in health policy research.

In the 2012 - 2014 cohort, the program will enable up to 9 individuals to spend two years at one of three nationally prominent universities, Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley (in collaboration with the University of California at San Francisco), and The University of Michigan.

The Program congratulates recipients of the 2012 - 2014 fellowship awards:
COHORT 19 SCHOLARS(2012 - 2014)

ECONOMICS
Michael Geruso (Harvard University Site)
2012 PhD, Princeton University

Sarah Miller (University of Michigan Site)
2012 PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Reed Walker (University of California, Berkeley/San Francisco Site)
2012 PhD, Columbia University

POLITICAL SCIENCE
Daniel Gillion (Harvard University Site)
Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania
2009 PhD, University of Rochester

Andrew Kelly (University of California, Berkeley/San Francisco Site)
2012 PhD, Northwestern University

Francisco Pedraza (University of Michigan Site)
Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University
2010 PhD, University of Washington

SOCIOLOGY
Rachel Best (University of Michigan Site)
2012 PhD, University of California, Berkeley

Daniel Schneider (University of California, Berkeley/San Francisco Site)
2012 PhD, Princeton University

Robert Vargas (Harvard University Site)
2012 PhD, Northwestern University

Interested in Applying?

To receive our next Call for Applications (CFA) in July 2012. 

Go to CONTACT US , enter your email and type CFA into the Message area.

Scholars Speak Video

"Being a program scholar is probably the single most helpful thing that’s happened to me in the past year in terms of advancing my career."
Christopher Bail
Scholar|Cohort 18|Sociology

Watch the SCHOLARS SPEAK Video

Featured Scholars

Brigham Frandsen Ph.D.
Cohort 17
Harvard University
Brigham received a Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 2010. His research focuses on the causal effect of interventions and institutions on the distribution of individual outcomes in health care, education, and labor markets, and on developing the econometric tools to identify and estimate these effects. Some current projects include a study of the political economy of union wage setting and its effect on the distribution of earnings, and the effect of fragmentation in health care on the distribution of patient outcomes.
Graeme Boushey Ph.D.
Cohort 17
University of Michigan
Graeme received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Washington in 2007, and will be on leave from the Department of Political Science at San Francisco State University, where he is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and State Politics.  His research focuses on public policy innovation and political decision-making in America. His book Policy Diffusion Dynamics in America (Cambridge University Press, 2010), integrates research from agenda setting and epidemiology to model factors that shape the speed and scope of public policy diffusion. As a scholar, he will explore how American state governments respond to complex health policy threats, initially focusing on state vaccination programs.
Boris Shor Ph.D.
Cohort 18
University of California, Berkeley/UCSF
Boris holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University and is currently on leave from University of Chicago, where he is an assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies. His research focuses on ideology and political parties in American legislatures. One current project focuses on how well state legislatures and congressional delegations represent the ideological preferences of citizens at the micro and macro levels. Another seeks to find the roots of political polarization at the state level, as well as its policy consequences. He is interested in explaining the vastly different choices states make in deciding health policy.
Benjamin Handel Ph.D.
Cohort 17
University of California, Berkeley/UCSF
Benjamin holds a Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University. His research focuses on the economic foundations of consumer choice and market performance in health insurance. His dissertation work uses a large micro-level dataset to study consumer choice adequacy and how that interacts with adverse selection in health insurance markets. More generally, he is interested in the design and performance of regulated health markets, such as health insurance exchanges, and firm competition and regulatory policy in environments in which it is difficult for consumers to make decisions. After the Program, he will take a position as an assistant professor in the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Economics.
Neale Mahoney Ph.D.
Cohort 18
Harvard University
Neale received a  Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University in 2011. He conducts research in the fields of public finance and industrial organization and has a particular interest in health insurance markets. In his dissertation, he examines the implicit health insurance households received from the ability to declare bankruptcy, the effects of supplemental Medigap insurance on overall medical utilization, and the efficiency consequences of community-rating regulations. After completing the Program, he will assume a faculty position at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
Christopher Bail Ph.D.
Cohort 18
University of Michigan
Christopher received his Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at Harvard University in 2011. His primary interests include social movements, social policies, and collective identity. He is currently completing a book manuscript about how social movement organizations shape the representation of Islam in the American public sphere. As a scholar, he plans to study social movements working to transform public understandings of Autism. After completing the program he will assume a position as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Michael Sauder Ph.D.
Cohort 17
Havard University
Michael holds a Ph.D. is sociology from Northwestern University and is currently on leave from the University of Iowa, where he is an associate professor in the Sociology Department. His research interests include quantification, organizational evaluation, and status. He is currently completing a project that explores the effects of public rankings on higher education. Ongoing research includes a study of how children’s hospitals use rankings, awards, and certifications to establish organizational identity and an investigation of how physician groups respond to patient experience surveys. 
Kurt Lavetti Ph.D.
Cohort 18
University of California, Berkeley/UCSF
Kurt received a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University in 2011.  His primary research interests are in labor and health economics, with an emphasis on physician labor supply.  His dissertation focused on the identification of compensating wage differentials, with empirical applications to the estimation of the price of occupational fatality risk and the implied value of statistical life, as well as the effects of non-compete agreements in physician labor contracts.  His other research studies the relationships between physicians’ geographic labor supply decisions and physician quality, and formulary design in the Medicare Part D market.
Robert Saldin Ph.D.
Cohort 17
Harvard University
Robert holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Virginia and is currently on leave from the University of Montana, where he is an assistant professor in the Political Science Department.  He is the author of War, the American State, and Politics since 1898 (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and his scholarly articles have appeared in venues such as the Journal of Politics, Journal of Policy History, and Political Research Quarterly.  As a RWJF Scholar, he is using an historical institutionalist approach to study long-term care’s policy history and its place in the American welfare regime.
Seth Freedman Ph.D.
Cohort 17
University of Michigan
Seth received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2010. His research primarily focuses on the functioning of markets with information asymmetries. His dissertation studied the effects of the diffusion of neonatal intensive care units on infant treatment and health outcomes, and in other work he has examined how consumers respond to product recalls and the effects of information asymmetries in online peer-to-peer lending markets. As a scholar, he is exploring the determinants of hospital technology adoption and the organization of hospital transfer networks. After the Program, he will assume his position as an assistant professor at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

View all current scholars...