The University of Georgia College of Public Health is celebrating the first year of its doctoral program in Health Services Research and Policy. Years in the making, this program is designed to meet a critical need in health care policy and analysis, addressing the growing demand for experts skilled in leveraging big data to improve health care systems in the United States and globally.

This program stands out from the crowd due to its focus on quantitative analysis of massive health data sets—Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance and more.

M. Mahmud Khan

“The health care industry generates an enormous volume of data daily,” said Health Policy & Management Department Head and Professor Mahmud Khan. “But in the U.S., we don’t have enough skilled individuals who can actually analyze the data and come up with specific policy, program, and health system implications.”

The curriculum equips students to tackle critical questions, such as the effectiveness of payment mechanisms for health care providers and the efficiency of drug policies, all with the goal of improving outcomes without increasing costs.

“The question always comes up: How do we improve the use of resources in the health care sector?” Khan said. “That’s exactly what health services researchers answer. They work to use the same level of resources to produce improved outcomes.”

The College of Public Health’s interdisciplinary approach makes it uniquely suited to host this program, Khan added.

“You can’t think of any other college where there is this broad range of important issues being analyzed and discussed,” Khan said. “A similar type of data analysis can be taught in other programs, but they don’t always see the health aspects or human aspects. That’s what public health does.”

Students can tailor their electives across diverse fields, from social work to law, fostering collaboration with epidemiologists, biostatisticians and policymakers.

Dr. Janani Rajbhandari-Thapa

“When we developed the program of study, we made sure to include electives as an opportunity for our students to gear toward their own area of interest,” said Janani Rajbhandari-Thapa, associate professor. “We expect there will be many diverse sets of research coming out of this program, and we want to provide the opportunity to follow them — whether it’s social work, courses in the business school, developing strategy for a for-profit hospital or other paths.”

As the country faces rising health care costs, this program can produce researchers who can understand how preventive services and policies impact health outcomes, Khan said. But even beyond the U.S., the program has global implications, Thapa added.

“Our health services researchers are going to be from diverse settings and diverse health care systems,” Thapa said. “And they’ll be ready to go back and serve those communities.”

In its first cohort, the program enrolled six students, all funded by faculty research grants.

Even though this is an ever-growing field, maintaining a small cohort size ensures personalized mentorship and rigorous training.

“We aim to maintain our quality and rigor in order to produce the best quality, not just highest volume, of researchers,” Thapa said.

By Erica Techo

Posted December 16, 2024