Katherine Baicker

Kate is leading a SHARE-funded project that will analyze newly-available data on utilization of primary care and prescription drugs along with other outcomes among a population of diabetic Medicaid enrollees who received an intervention to test the effectiveness of behavioral nudges versus financial incentives in promoting statin use.  The results will give policy-makers information on mechanisms for improving disease management and the effectiveness of utilization in public insurance programs.  The lessons learned from this intervention may be able to provide insights into a broader class of program improvements that can be applied to other types of care in other populations and in other states.

Professional Background

Kate is Professor of Health Economics in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health.  She is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Kate's research focuses primarily on the factors that drive the distribution, generosity, and effectiveness of public and private health insurance, with a particular focus on health insurance finance and the effect of reforms on the distribution and quality of care.  Her research has been published in journals such as Health Affairs, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and on National Public Radio.  She has given Congressional testimony on health reform before several House and Senate Committees.

Additional Professional Roles

From 2005-2007, Kate served as a Senate-confirmed Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, where she played a leading role in the development of health policy.  She currently serves on the Editorial Boards of Health Affairs, the Journal of Health Economics, and the Forum for Health Economics and Policy; is Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of AcademyHealth; is on the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers; and is a Commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

Kate has served on the faculty of the Department of Public Policy in the School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago; the Economics Department at Dartmouth College; and the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences and the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School.