Faculty & Staff Resources

My research agenda is theoretically motivated by a diverse set of literatures, including research on the development of the American state, public policy research on agenda-setting, and work in the fields of public health and health policy. I am currently engaged in ongoing projects dealing with the US disaster state, the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the political development of health policy.

I am currently working on a National Science Foundation-funded study that examines non-state service provision in the context of multiple extreme events. My previous research on the role of non-state service providers in supplementing state capacity after disasters has also been funded by the National Science Foundation.

My recent publications include “The Challenges of Modeling COVID-19,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), with Andrea Bertozzi, Elisa Franco, Martin Short, and George Mohler, and “From Disaster Response to Community Recovery,” published in the American Journal of Public Health, with Herschel F. Thomas.

My article “Linking Public Health and Individual Medicine: The Health Policy Approach of Surgeon General Thomas Parran” received the 2017 Paper of the Year Award from the American Public Health Association and the American Journal of Public Health.

My book, Health Divided: Public Health and Individual Medicine in the Making of the Modern American State, offers a reinterpretation of the foundations of modern American health policy, focusing on the divergence between policy regimes dealing with public health and with individual medical care. The book explores how public health policies have shaped health outcomes as well as the ways in which policy changes have fed back into the health care system and reshaped policy priorities. It highlights the role of entrepreneurial bureaucrats in building new programs, generating support for them, and constructing new networks of intergovernmental relations.