Grant will support postdoctoral research
on health policy issues

Yale has received a five-year, $4.3 million grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to pursue advanced research in public health and health care.

The grant will support Yale's continued participation in the foundation's Scholars in Health Policy Research Program, which enables a group of postdoctoral scholars to pursue independent research in areas such as economics, sociology and political science, and apply that knowledge to health policy issues. Yale has participated in the program since its founding in 1992, and has received five grants from the Princeton, New Jersey-based philanthropy for this project.

"It's an extraordinary financial investment in pursuit of these goals," says Theodore Marmor, professor of political science at the School of Management and program director. "The fact that it comes in a lump sum is helpful and enormously generous."

Administered by the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, the program will each year bring three or four new scholars to New Haven from across the country for two-year fellowships. During that time, researchers will explore with faculty members the full range of factors that influence public health and health care, including the structure of medical organizations, population demographics, and governmental and public policies.

This year, the foundation is sponsoring three postdoctoral scholars at Yale: John Evan, a sociologist who earned his Ph.D. degree from Princeton University; Robin Rogers-Dillon, a sociologist who earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania; and Rogan Kersh, a political scientist who earned his Ph.D. from Yale.

Marmor and program codirector Mark Schlesinger, associate professor of public health at the School of Medicine, currently orchestrate the efforts of faculty mentors from the social sciences as well as the Schools of Law and Management, and the department of epidemology and public health. According to Marmor, the interdisciplinary approach is crucial to advancing American health policy.

"Understanding health care policy, let alone prescribing solutions for it, calls upon a set of institutions that no particular discipline has a monopoly on," he says.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to public health and health care. It became a national institution in 1972 and has since made more than $2.6 billion in grants. The foundation also sponsors the Scholars in Health Policy Research Program at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan.