Health Services Research Colloquium - Risha Gidwani, DrPH

“The Impact of Insurance Benefit Design on Quality of Care for Chronic Illness: Evidence from Employer-Sponsored Insurance”

Risha Gidwani, DrPH, is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in the Division of Health Care Policy and Research. She serves as the Research Director for the division and holds secondary appointments in General Internal Medicine, Geriatrics, and at the Colorado School of Public Health. She is also a Senior Researcher (now adjunct) at the RAND Corporation and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. From 2013 to 2018, she was a Consulting Assistant Professor at Stanford School of Medicine and a Health Economist at the VA Health Economics Resource Center.

Dr. Gidwani’s research focuses on the impact of health policy/insurance benefit design on quality-of-care and patient financial burden, using both quasi-experimental techniques and simulation modeling. She has been principal investigator on multiple peer-reviewed studies evaluating the cost and quality of U.S. health care. Dr. Gidwani is experienced in studying a range of insurance mechanisms, including employer-sponsored insurance, Medicare, VA, and the Affordable Care Act. Her research focuses on producing policy-relevant solutions to address the challenges facing patients with serious healthcare needs. Work she has led has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as JAMA Network Open, JAMA Health Forum, Health Affairs, Health Services Research, and Medical Care, among others.