Julie M. Donohue, PhD

Dr. Donohue is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management, in the Graduate School of Public Health. She is the Director of the Medicaid Research Center (MRC). She holds secondary appointments in the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and is a faculty affiliate in the Health Policy Institute. Donohue earned a PhD in health policy from Harvard University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in pharmaceutical policy research at Harvard Medical School.

Donohue conducts research on insurance coverage, financing, and delivery of health care with a focus on use of prescription drugs and behavioral health services. She has studied the impact of policy changes on access, quality and costs in Medicare, Medicaid and commercial insurance. Her research has been published in leading journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, JAMA Psychiatry, Annals of Internal Medicine and Health Affairs. She is currently conducting epidemiologic, economic and policy research for state Medicaid programs with a focus on Pennsylvania. In collaboration with AcademyHealth, she launched the Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network (MODRN) to support state Medicaid policy evaluations. Donohue also conducts research on the impact of the Affordable Care Act on access to care; regional variation in health care use and spending; and studies the organizational, industry and policy influences on physician prescribing behavior. Donohue’s research group has a long track record of grant funding from federal agencies including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, and from several foundations.