Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine at Stanford University’s Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research, director of Stanford’s Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He also serves as a research associate at Acumen LLC and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
His research focuses on the constraints that vulnerable populations face in making decisions that affect their health status, as well as the effects of government policies and programs designed to benefit vulnerable populations. He has published empirical economics and health services research on the elderly, adolescents, HIV/AIDS and managed care. Most recently, he researched the regulation of the viatical-settlements market (a secondary life-insurance market that often targets HIV patients) and summer/winter differences in nutritional outcomes for low-income American families. He is also working on a project examining labor-market conditions that determine why some U.S. employers do not provide health insurance.
Bhattacharya was previously an economist at the RAND Corporation, and taught health economics as a visiting assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He earned a bachelor’s degree, MD and PhD from Stanford University.
