Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy

Not quite ready to apply for a PhD, but curious?

• Welcome! You may still benefit from reviewing the information on this page. A helpful exercise you can engage in is to review the CV/work history of researchers you admire to see what their training path looked like. This can give you insight into the predoctoral training expectations and training programs that could prepare you for the work that you eventually want to pursue.

• Dr. Sherri Rose maintains a list of summer programs that introduce undergraduate students to biostatistics and health services research.

• Pathways to Research and Doctoral Careers (PREDOC.org) provides resources and guidance regarding preparing for a doctoral program.

• U.S. citizens and permanent residents from underrepresented backgrounds (defined by your family’s socioeconomic status, your disability status, and/or your race/ethnicity) may be candidates for an NIH diversity supplement. This supplement could help fund predoctoral research experiences for high school, undergraduate, and post-baccalaureate-level trainees. My colleagues have created a guide to these supplements that you may find useful.

Admissions exams

• The GRE is optional for every concentration except the Management track. The Health Policy PhD program does not screen or rank applications based on GRE scores. See the program website for more information.

Resources to learn more about the program and admissions process

• The program's website has information about faculty, our curricula, student dissertation topics, the jobs alumni currently hold, and more information about the admissions process. Note that our doctoral program is an interfaculty program that spans six Harvard schools (Medicine, Business, Public Health, etc.) and it is therefore not affiliated with a single department.

• We host info sessions during each admissions cycle. Info sessions help to ensure that all prospective applicants have access to the same information so that they can prepare the best application possible. We encourage all applicants to attend a live virtual info session or watch the recordings to verify that our program is a good fit for your goals. [2023-2024 recording] [2024-2025 recording] 

• The Decision Sciences concentration has hosted a track-specific info session in 2022. Our admissions priorities have not changed since this date. We encourage all applicants to watch the recordings to verify that this track is a good fit for your goals. [2022-2023 recording] 

• Wondering what you should write in your research statement? We outline this in our recorded info sessions. This guide, "PhD applications: A peek behind the admissions committee curtain" by Jaimie Gradus and Maria Glymour is also great in my personal opinion.

• I manage a Twitter list of program faculty, students, alumni, and associated groups. Following this list may provide some insight into the topics in which our affiliates are interested.

• Former program faculty member Dr. Laura Hatfield has compiled a webpage with tips for prospective students considering our program. This guide is another way to learn about how our doctoral program operates.

• The Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences offers an application fee waiver to those for whom payment of the application fee would be financially challenging. 

• Prospective students frequently ask about scholarships and funding. This information can be found on the FAQ and is discussed during the info sessions. U.S. citizens and permanent residents from underrepresented backgrounds (defined by your family’s socioeconomic status, your disability status, and/or your race/ethnicity) may be candidates for an NIH diversity supplement. This supplement could help fund research experiences for Master's and doctoral students. My colleagues have created a guide to these supplements that you may find useful.

The hidden curriculum

There is a hidden curriculum to graduate school admissions that can negatively impact equity in the admissions process. I believe that all applicants should have access to the same information to level the playing field, so to speak. Given the wealth of resources that have been provided to demystify the admissions process for our program, my personal policy this year is that I will not take individual meetings or review CVs of prospective students. However, considering the interdisciplinary nature and interfaculty structure of our program, I will respond to inquiries about whether there are faculty at Harvard whose research interests align with yours. 

Faculty advisors

Faculty advisors in our program are determined after admission to the program and we do not admit students to sit in a particular "lab" or to work with a specific faculty member. Collaborations between faculty and students develop during the first two years of study based on mutual areas of interest. Where can you find us? While many Decision Sciences faculty, research scientists, and students sit in the Center for Health Decision Science at the Harvard T.H, Chan School of Public Health, decision scientists can be found across the University including at the Harvard Kennedy School, Massachusetts General Hospital (e.g. Health Decision Sciences Center, Institute for Technology Assessment), the Department of Population Medicine, the School of Dental Medicine, and many of Harvard Medical School's other affiliate hospitals. Finally, students in our concentration are not limited to working with Decision Sciences faculty for their dissertations or as a research assistant. 

You can get a sense of which faculty are actively working with trainees and the topics where they have expertise by reviewing the list of dissertation committee members on the program website. This is not comprehensive, but is a start.

Harvard has over 12,000 faculty across its schools and affiliated teaching hospitals. If you still have questions about who at Harvard does research on a particular topic and where they are based after reviewing the aforementioned links (especially if you're looking for Decision Sciences faculty), please contact me via email. Please do not send a request to connect via LinkedIn for this purpose. 

Other graduate programs

There are many excellent programs beyond Harvard at other universities that offer comprehensive training in Health Policy, Decision Sciences, Health Economics, Health Services Research, Population Health, and adjacent fields. Each program has different attributes, and whether a particular attribute of a program is a strength or weakness can be subjective and may vary from candidate to candidate.  I would encourage you to explore multiple programs so that you can identify which program attributes you value. These Twitter threads [2021, 2022, 2023] and the AcademyHealth list of health services research training programs may offer insight into other programs that might be a good fit for your research interests. These resources are not comprehensive, however, and may exclude programs based in schools of Pharmacy (e.g., Pharmaceutical Policy, Pharmaceutical Economics, Pharmacoeconomics), Population Health programs, and schools outside of the US.

I hope these resources answer your questions. If you still have outstanding questions, feel free to reach out to our program staff.

If you decide to pursue further graduate training, I hope you find the option that is the best fit for you personally and professionally. If you feel like the Harvard program is a good fit for you, we hope you apply!

Good luck with your professional journey!