Lindsey Leininger

Lindsey is leading a SHARE-funded project that will look at Wisconsin's 2009 expansion of Medicaid to childless adults to assess the value of collecting self-reported health measures at the time of application for Medicaid--a novel use of Medicaid enrollment systems--for the purposes of predicting health care utilization and thereby informing prospective program design. This study will be the first to explore the promise of using enrollment systems data in this capacity, and its findings will inform state Medicaid programs as they design and build on existing enrollment systems in preparation for the major ACA-related coverage expanions slated for 2014.

Professional Background

Lindsey is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  Her research expertise includes the health care safety net and the health care utilization experiences of children and adolescents. She has a particular interest in the Medicaid program and the determinants of health and well-being among the populations that it serves. Her current work explores how state Medicaid agencies can optimize and improve upon their existing data resources to implement cost-effective quality improvement initiatives.

Additional Professional Roles

Before joining the faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Lindsey worked as a Researcher at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago.  From 2008 to 2010, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before which she was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for Human Polential and Public Policy at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.  Lindsey earned a Ph.D. in Public Policy Studies from the University of Chicago and an M.A. in Economics from Northeastern University.