Hannah O. James, PhD MS

ABOUT ME

I am an Associate Policy Researcher at RAND based in the Boston area. I also maintain an adjunct Investigator appointment with the Brown University School of Public Health.

I am a health services researcher by training and received my PhD in Health Services Research and a concentration in Health Economics from Brown University in Spring 2024.  My research interests are centered on payment policy and opportunities to improve the value of health care spending. I have a particular interest in affordability as a determinant of access, state efforts to address health care cost growth, and emerging tools that can improve the functionality and experience of the health system for both patients and providers (e.g., LLMs, chatbots, digital health applications, etc.). My research has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Health Affairs, JAMA Health Forum, Health Services Research, among others.

Prior to my doctoral studies, I served as a Senior Research Associate on the Research and Cost Trends team of the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission.  At the HPC, my work concentrated on understanding and evaluating cost trends in the Commonwealth, and has spanned topics from healthcare workforce issues, to rising medication costs, and provider price variation. I received my Master of Science from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and my Bachelor of Science from Cornell University.