# Health Policy Training Grant

> **NIH AHRQ T32** · HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL · 2021 · $404,791

## Abstract

Project Abstract
We are applying for support to continue the Harvard Health Policy Training Program and seek
monies over a five-year period for eight predoctoral students. This program is embedded in
Harvard's Interfaculty PhD Program in Health Policy, which aims to train investigators in health
policy and health services research, consistent with the mission of AHRQ. Our students have
written dissertations on topics related to many of AHRQ's strategic research goals, including
quality and patient safety, prevention and care management, health care access and equity,
and evaluating organizational and payment interventions. The PhD Program is a collaboration
among six Harvard faculties and is administered by a 55-member faculty committee that is
appointed by the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; the Committee is chaired by David
Cutler, the Program Director for this grant application. The participating faculty for the purposes
of this grant are the 14 members of the Executive Committee, a subset of the 55-member
Committee.
The philosophy of the PhD Program is that students will work as part of an interdisciplinary
research team and therefore need a discipline that they bring to the team, as well as an
understanding of the disciplines of other team members or potential readers of their work. To
implement this philosophy, students choose one of six disciplines (decision sciences,
economics, ethics, evaluative science and statistics, management, political analysis) in which
they take about half of their coursework; additionally, they take some coursework in three other
disciplines. Due to intensive monitoring and advising, most of our students finish their degree in
six years or less. Of the 283 students who have ever begun the PhD Program, 200 have
graduated and 64 are currently enrolled.
We have had our current training grant since 1994 and over that time have appointed 108
students as AHRQ trainees. We have attracted a high-quality applicant pool and have many
more qualified persons who could be trainees; we have always filled our training grant slots. Our
trainees have taken jobs in academia, research institutions, and government, and they generally
have received multiple job offers. Several have won awards for their predoctoral research and
also for their research and teaching after the degree. Six students from our program have
received the AcademyHealth Outstanding Dissertation Award and one has received Honorable
Mention, and the four most recent recipients of the Alice S. Hersch New Investigator Award from
AcademyHealth are alumni of the PhD Program.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10186797
- **Project number:** 5T32HS000055-28
- **Recipient organization:** HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
- **Principal Investigator:** DAVID M CUTLER
- **Activity code:** T32 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** AHRQ
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $404,791
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1994-09-30 → 2023-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10186797

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10186797, Health Policy Training Grant (5T32HS000055-28). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10186797. Licensed CC0.

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