Harvard University: Arts & Sciences: Health Policy
Category Art and Social Sciences, Doctoral, Harvard University, Health Policy, Postgraduate, USATags Arts, Harvard University, Health Policy, Sciences
The PhD in Health Policy , awarded by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is a collaborative program of six Harvard University faculties: the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
This degree is intended for students seeking teaching careers in institutes of higher learning and/or research careers in health policy. Joseph P. Newhouse, John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management, is chair of the Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy that administers the program; Katherine Swartz, Professor of Health Policy and Economics, is director of graduate studies; Joan P. Curhan is director of the PhD Program in Health Policy, and Deborah Whitney is associate director.
Candidates for the PhD in health policy will generally be in residence for two years before undertaking qualifying examinations. Satisfactory completion of those examinations is a prerequisite for writing a dissertation. Students are strongly encouraged to remain
in residence in the Cambridge area until they have passed the dissertation proposal orals. How-ever, the program encourages students to remain in residence throughout the dissertation stage as well. Continuation of candidacy is contingent upon suitable progress and achievement during each academic year.
Please visit our Website at www.fas.harvard.edu/~healthpl. It is recommended that applicants obtain additional information about the PhD Program in Health Policy from Deborah Whitney, associate director, PhD Program in Health Policy, (617)-496-5506, deborah_whitney@harvard.edu.
Admissions
A distinguished undergraduate record, as well as excellent performance in any graduate work undertaken, is required for admission to the PhD Program in Health Policy. Preference will be given to applicants who have had either some work experience or some graduate work after completion of a bachelor’s degree, although a previous graduate degree is not required. Scores from the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) or the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) that are five years old or less are required for all applicants. In addition, applicants whose native language is not English must take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).
The PhD Program in Health Policy is particularly committed to increasing the diversity of its doctoral student population. Minority candidates, including African-Americans-, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans are especially encouraged to apply.
Those wishing to apply to the MD program at the Harvard Medical School, as well as to the PhD Program in Health Policy, must apply separately to each program and indicate in the application to the PhD Program that a concurrent application has been submitted to the Harvard Medical School. Those admitted to both programs can combine some of the coursework to save time.
Similarly, applicants interested in the Coordinated JD/PhD program must apply to and be separately admitted to both the Law School and the PhD Program in Health Policy before applying to the Coordinated JD/PhD Program. Applicants should indicate in the application to the PhD Program that a concurrent application has been submitted to Harvard Law School.
Applicants are asked to
- include a curriculum vitae or résumé with the application to the program;
- indicate on a separate page in the application which area(s) of concentration and which policy area(s) within the program are of special interest; up to two areas of concentration may be specified; applicants interested in pursuing the medical sociology concentration should contact the Health Policy Program Office before applying for this concentration;
- include letters of recommendation. Recommenders may submit letters online instead;
- send fall term grades when available if attending school while applying to the program.
The application deadline is in mid-December for admission in the following fall.
To request admissions material, applicants should contact the Admissions Office, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Holyoke Center, 3rd floor, 1350 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, (617) 495-5315. Prospective applicants may visit the GSAS Website (www.gsas.harvard.edu ) to apply online or to request an application.
Financial Aid
The department offers funding for financial support of graduate study, based both on need and merit. For example, thanks to grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Library of Medicine, the program can offer some traineeships to students who are US citizens or permanent residents of the US. As the program is committed to increasing the diversity of the doctoral student population, Harvard provides Graduate Prize Fellowships (tuition for five years in the program and a stipend for three years) to underrepresented minority applicants, with financial need, who are admitted to the program. Applicants are encouraged to apply for external grants and fellowships whenever possible. The program has created a list of fellowship opportunities in health policy, which will be sent to you upon request.
Degree Requirements
The PhD program has the following components:
- two years of coursework, including a core course
- concentration in one academic discipline (decision sciences, economics, ethics, evaluative science and statistics, management, medical sociology, or political analysis) and specialization in one policy area (environmental health, health care services, international health, mental health, or public health)
- three one-term courses, chosen from three concentrations outside a student’s field of concentration. The statistics requirement (noted below) may be used to satisfy one of the three requirements, except for students concentrating in evaluative science and statistics
- two one-term courses in statistics
- one course in epidemiology
- written general and concentration examinations following two years of course work; the general exam may contain an oral component
- a weekly research seminar starting in the third year
- a dissertation prospectus and examination
- a dissertation based on research and a dissertation defense
Concentrations
Students in the PhD in health policy program choose a concentration and meet specific curriculum requirements in one of the following seven disciplines. For complete information on each concentration, including course requirements for each, please visit the program Website at: www.fas.harvard.edu/~healthpl.
Decision Sciences
(Professor Milton C.Weinstein, chair).Decision sciences are the collection of quantitative techniques that are used for decision making at the individual and collective level. They include decision analysis, risk analysis, cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis, decision modeling, and behavioral decision theory, as well as parts of operations research, microeconomics, statistical inference, management control, cognitive and social psychology, and computer science. The concentration in decision sciences prepares students for research careers that involve the application of these methods to health problems-.
Economics
(Professor Joseph P. Newhouse, chair). The concentration in economics focuses on the economic behavior of individuals; providers; insurers; and international, federal, state, and local governments and actors as their actions affect health and medical care. In addition to examining the literature on health economics, the training emphasizes microeconomic theory, econometrics, and interactions with other disciplines, including clinical medicine. The concentration prepares students for research and teaching careers as health economists.
Ethics
(Professor Norman Daniels, chair). The ethics concentration integrates quantitative, qualitative, and normative approaches to the analysis of ethical issues in health policy and clinical practice. Increasingly, the investigation of ethical issues in medicine and health policy has not only drawn on normative ethics and political philosophy, but has included empirical research concerning attitudes and practices in clinical and broader institutional settings. A grasp of normative theories and tools is important because ethical principles and approaches underlie, explicitly or implicitly, the formulation of particular health policies at both the macro and micro level. Students in this track will focus on developing skills in a range of disciplines, with the goal of evaluating how ethical and socio-cultural values shape—and should shape—health policies as well as clinical and public health practices. Students with a strong background in ethics and political philosophy will have a chance to deepen that understanding and apply it to issues in health policy while at the same time acquiring necessary quantitative skills. Students with degrees or training in related fields, such as law or medicine or public health, will acquire both normative and quantitative skills needed for research and teaching in ethics and health policy.
Research in health policy and ethics would include such topics as: policies for the allocation of scarce resources to individuals (e.g., human organs for transplantation, newly developed drugs, hospital beds) and across categories of patients (treatment vs. prevention for HIV/AIDS, or for HIV/AIDS vs. malaria); policies for care at the beginning and end of life; evaluation of informed consent protocols and their effectiveness; issues of equity in the evaluation of policies determining access to health services and the reduction of risk factors; policies responding to cross-cultural variation in ethical norms; ways in which health professionals are educated; policies regarding the balance between the individual and the collective (e.g., in bio-terrorism, epidemic control, etc.). While not abandoning the concerns of traditional work in bioethics, the program aims to produce students who are interested in the ethics of population health. Accordingly, students in this track will develop core skills for the conduct of both normative analysis and empirical research in ethics.
Evaluative Science and Statistics
(Professor Stephen B. Soumerai and Professor Alan M. Zaslavsky, co-chairs). The concentration in evaluative science and statistics includes research design, statistics and probability, and quantitative methods in biometry, economics, epidemiology, psychology, and sociology. This training enables students to design experiments and surveys, to perform health outcome assessment studies, to develop statistical models and analyses to evaluate these studies, and to make statistical inferences from observational data sets that arise from health policy and medical care processes. This concentration prepares students to evaluate alternative policy options in health care.
Management
(Professor Amy Edmondson and Associate Professor Robert S. Huckman, co-chairs). The management concentration prepares students to do research on the organizational, managerial, and strategic issues facing health care providers, payers, and other players in the health care market. Students in this track will learn how theories and concepts from fields such as technology and operations management, organizational behavior, organizational economics, and competitive strategy can be applied to health care organizations. Students in this track should have a strong interest in pursuing research on such issues as the design and improvement of health care delivery processes, approaches for improving health care quality and productivity, the development and adoption of new medical technologies, financial incentives in health care, the new role of patients as consumers in health care, the appropriate ownership and organizational structure of hospitals and other health care providers, and the management of professional health care staffs. We expect students completing this track to find jobs in academic and research institutions that have an interest in the impact of management on health care.
Medical Sociology
(Professor Peter V. Marsden, chair). In this concentration, students will learn about, and contribute to knowledge in, several research areas that are extremely important to health policy, including the study of professions and professional behavior, the structure of health care organizations and systems, the impact of organizational and professional change on the structure of medical work, organizational improvement programs and their evaluation, evaluation of intervention programs, the diffusion of innovations across providers and organizations, and the behavior of patients and consumers—including consumer evaluations of health care quality and patient perspectives on the process and outcomes of care.
Political Analysis
(Professor Robert J. Blendon, chair). This concentration is intended for students who wish to do research on the relationship between politics and health policy. Students will study theories of individual opinion formation, voting behavior, legislative organization, and interest group formation. In addition, students will examine the role of public opinion, interest groups, the media, and institutions in influencing health policy outcomes. The research methodologies most utilized in this track include survey research methods and quantitative statistical methods appropriate for large-scale databases. Graduates of this concentration will likely teach and do research on the politics of health care and will be involved with government, professional, and consumer groups on research projects related to the politics of public policy in the public health and health services fields.
Policy Areas
In addition to choosing a concentration, students specialize in one of five areas of policy interest:
Environmental Health
(Professor James Hammitt, chair). This area is designed for students whose interests relate to environmental pollution. Examples of topics for study include community right-to-know laws, marketable pollution permits, effluent fees, technology-forcing regulation, and mass toxic tort litigation.
Health Care Services.
This area is designed for students whose primary interests are access to health care, medical technology assessment, quality of health care, and the costs and financing of health care services.
International Health
(Professor David E. Bloom, chair). This policy area focuses on the economic determinants and consequences of health and health care in countries other than the US, especially less developed countries.
Mental Health
(Professor Richard G. Frank, chair). This area is designed for students who wish to specialize in mental health policy, including the financing of services, the roles of public and private sectors, and the links between mental health and human services.
Public Health
(Professor Sue J. Goldie, chair). This area is designed for students who are interested in policies directed at the rates of disease and injury in the population. Major topics include smoking behavior, control of alcohol abuse, mental health, traffic accidents, dietary and nutritional recommendations, occupational safety, gun control, control of infectious diseases including AIDS, and food and drug regulation.
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