PhD in Health Policy

Overview

Stanford Health Policy offers a PhD program which promises to educate students who will be scholarly leaders in the field of health policy, and will be highly knowledgeable about the theoretical and empirical approaches that can be applied in the development of improvements in health policy and the health care system. The curriculum offers courses across a wide range of health policy areas including health economics, health insurance and government program operation, health financing, international health policy and economic development, cost-effectiveness analysis and the evaluation of new technologies, health law and ethics, health systems operations, relevant statistical and methodological approaches, and health policy issues related to public health concerns like obesity and chronic disease. In addition to taking a set of core courses, students are expected to complete coursework in one of three tracks:

1. Health Economics - including the economic behavior of individuals, providers, insurers, and governments and the methodologic training to measure how their actions affect health and medical care,

2. Decision Sciences - with quantitative techniques to assess the effectiveness and value of medical treatments and for decision making about medical care and health policies at the individual and/or collective level,

or

3. Evaluative Methods – encompassing advanced statistical, computational, and other quantitative methodologies appropriate for application in areas of interest to students such as organizational behavior, law, ethics, and data science.

Advising

Academic advising by our faculty is a critical component of our graduate students' education.

All matriculating students will be assigned a faculty advisor from the group of CORE FACULTY to help them design their academic program. Students will remain with this advisor until the time that they have developed other arrangements for advising.

Advisors will meet with students within the first quarter of each year to discuss students' Individual Development Plan(s) (IDPs).  Additionally, students will meet with their advisor(s) on a regular basis throughout each year to discuss course selection, progress through the program, development of research projects, and career plans.

Academic progress and student completion of program requirements and milestones are monitored by the program staff and directors and discussed at quarterly meetings of all PhD advisors.

Students are expected to identify a group of normally 3 thesis advisors before or, at the latest, shortly after the time that they advance to candidacy for the degree. This group will consist of one primary and, at least, two secondary advisors, who may or may not be the same as the initially assigned faculty advisor. The Director of Graduate Studies and the Executive Committee will monitor advising arrangements to ensure that students receive adequate supervision.

For further information on advising in the program, please see the PhD Handbook.

Funding

Though circumstances may be different from one student to another, we anticipate being able to provide and/or help students obtain financial support for the first four years of the program. Individuals who are not citizens or permanent residents of the US may apply. However, due to funding restrictions we are limited in our ability to admit applicants who are not citizens or permanent residents and who do not have funding through the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program or substantial funding from another non-Stanford source. Students who are non-citizens or non-permanent residents are strongly encouraged to apply for such funding. 

For information about the Knight-Hennessy Program, please see: https://knight-hennessy.stanford.edu/ (please note the Knight-Hennessy Program has earlier deadlines than the PhD program)

PhD Application Process Explained

You can watch the recording of the PhD Pre-application Information Session.

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