Nicole Maestas Named Chair of Health Care Policy

Appointment highlights opportunities for policy research to improve individual and societal well-being

By JAKE MILLER August 29, 2024 HMS Community

3 min read

Portrait photo of a smiling woman with glasses and shoulder-length hair, sitting on a wall with a city skyline out of focus in the background.

Nicole Maestas. Image: Erik Neldner

For the first time since its founding in 1988, the Department of Health Care Policy in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School will have a new chair.

Nicole Maestas, the Margaret T. Morris Professor of Health Care Policy, will begin her term as chair Nov. 1.

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A specialist on the economics of disability insurance, labor markets, health care systems, and population aging, Maestas has been a faculty member in the department since 2015.

“I am inspired by Nicole’s vision for leading the Department of Health Care Policy at a time when our country is in dire need of strong insights into how the economics and policy aspects of health care can improve health and well-being for all,” said HMS Dean George Q. Daley in his announcement to the community.

Maestas was chosen following a rigorous national search that surfaced numerous outstanding candidates within and beyond the Harvard community.

“Nicole stood out for her disciplinary excellence and her discerning taste for distinction in others,” Daley said.

Maestas has made major contributions to science by combining new data sources with innovative study designs, Daley said. She has also helped overcome long-standing obstacles to understanding the context, cause, and effects of policy-relevant issues related to disability and aging.

“Her explorations of the complex interaction of social, economic, and medical factors exemplify the multifaceted, multidisciplinary work necessary to improve policy and individual health while also enhancing people’s ability to work, be productive, and participate in society in meaningful ways,” Daley said.

Maestas earned her Master of Public Policy and PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Before coming to Harvard, she was a senior economist at RAND, where she led a multidisciplinary research department and taught at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. In addition to her appointment at HMS, Maestas is also a research affiliate and director of the Retirement and Disability Research Center at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Better research, better policy, better health

Maestas highlighted the importance and promise of health care policy research at this moment.

“With more data and more powerful analytical tools than we’ve ever had access to before, there’s so much we can learn and do to improve health policy at the local, state, and national levels,” she said.

One of the most powerful lessons Maestas has learned in her years of researching the needs of people with disabilities is that it’s essential to focus more on the things that can be done than on the things that can’t.

“To improve economic participation of people with disabilities, I’ve found it’s less helpful to define a person based on their disability and more useful to recognize their many abilities and ways to contribute,” she said. “In the same way, when I’m thinking about policy research, I want to build a framework that can give rise to potential policy solutions instead of just identifying problems.”

Maestas said that she is looking forward to building on the strengths of the faculty already in the department and that she is eager to find new ways to increase the impact of the exceptional research being done at HMS.

“We need both basic research and translational activities to make sure that policymakers at every level have access to the insights and information they need to make policy work the best it can be,” she said.

Maestas, who regularly collaborates with researchers across many of Harvard’s schools, said she is also excited to find new ways to coordinate and integrate the work of the department with what she described as the tremendous health policy community across Harvard and its affiliated hospitals.

Honoring a pioneer of health care policy

Maestas will succeed Barbara J. McNeil, the Ridley Watts Professor and Chair of Health Care Policy, who founded the department and has served as chair for 36 years.

“I want to thank Barbara for her vision, leadership, and exceptional service to the School,” Daley said. “Her remarkable tenure includes serving as interim dean of HMS on two separate occasions.”

The HMS Department of Health Care Policy has a rich history of innovation. It was the first of its kind in a medical school, and it has been a pioneer in an interdisciplinary research approach that draws on the strengths of clinicians, social scientists, statisticians (and increasingly, bioinformaticists) to understand the impacts of policy on health and to offer guidance for building better policies.

“Barbara built a tremendous department from the ground up,” Maestas said. “It’s the honor of a lifetime to be chosen to succeed her.”

Daley also expressed his gratitude to the co-chairs of the advisory search committee for the position: Vikram Patel, the Paul Farmer Professor and Chair of the HMS Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and professor in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Leemore Dafny, the Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.