Andy Coburn

Andy is leading a SHARE-funded project that will identify and examine rural implementation issues, challenges, and potential policy and other strategies in two main areas of the ACA:(1) health system financing and delivery system reform and (2) insurance coverage expansions. The project will examine and highlight the important differences in how financing and delivery system innovations and insurance reform provisions are likely to work in rural versus urban populations/firms/areas.  Researchers will also evaluate how state policy and/or other strategies could be used to achieve more effective rural implementation.

Professional Background

Andy is Chair of the Graduate Program in Health Policy and Management and Director of Population Health and Health Policy in the Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine.

As the founding director of the Muskie School’s health policy programs, Andy has had a long-standing commitment to the application of health services research in policy and managerial decision making. For over 25 years he and his colleagues have worked with the Medicaid programs in Maine and other states on a wide variety of collaborative research, evaluation, and policy development initiatives. Andy’s research has focused on topics related to health insurance, rural health, and rural hospital patient safety.

Additional Professional Roles

Andy is the founding director of the Maine Rural Health Research Center, a national center funded by the federal Office of Rural Health Policy (HRSA). He is also a member of the Rural Policy Research Institute’s Expert Health Panel and has testified many times in Washington on rural health issues. Additionally, Andy served on the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Future of Rural Health Care.

While on sabbatical 2008-2009, Dr Coburn was a Visiting Faculty member at the Maine Medical Center’s, Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation in Portland, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto.