HCP’s involvement in education at HMS started with an elective health care policy course for medical students created by Haiden Huskamp and Barbara J. McNeil in 1999; it ultimately became a required month long course for first-year students. We now work collaboratively with the other social science departments to coordinate a one-month course in year one and then again in year three, after medical students have completed their principal clinical year. In year one they are taught fundamentals of health policy using a “flipped classroom” approach. The second half of the course, in the third year, leverages students’ clinical experiences to improve their understanding of health policy issues and how those issues come to bear in clinical practice.
HCP faculty members also offer courses in health care policy to undergraduates at Harvard College. These classes expose students to the basics in a field and set the stage for further study in a broad range of areas, including economics, statistics, and premed studies. HCP faculty also participate in courses at the Harvard Chan School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
HCP faculty view research through an interdisciplinary lens, which has supported their contributions to graduate education in the university-wide program in health policy at Harvard University as well as in several other doctoral programs. The health policy PhD program features several tracks: decision sciences, economics, ethics, methods for policy research, management, and political analysis. All members of the HCP faculty are affiliated formally with the degree program.
HCP faculty members have been chairs or members of the dissertation committees of 67 percent of the program’s graduates. Currently, faculty members chair or are members of committees for twenty-two of the thirty students who have assembled a dissertation committee. Thirty-four other students have not yet assembled dissertation committees; fifteen of these are advised by HCP faculty members. There are twenty-six doctoral students and trainees with another eight Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality trainees.
Visit the Courses pages to read more about the depth and breadth of courses that our faculty teach.