Benjamin Sommers

Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Economics

Department of Health Policy and Management

Kresge Building, Room 406
677 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Phone: 617.432.3271
bsommers@hsph.harvard.edu

Research

Dr. Sommers is a health economist and a physician whose main research interests are the uninsured, the health care safety net, and medical decision-making. He has received numerous awards for his research, including the Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2006 from AcademyHealth, a preeminent national association of health policy researchers. Dr. Sommers is a practicing primary care internist, and he is also an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He served as a Senior Advisor in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, from 2011-2012. His current research projects focus on barriers to health care access among low-income adults, Medicaid policy, and national health reform.