Jay Himmelstein is Senior Fellow in Health Policy and Research at NORC and a Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health and Internal Medicine at UMass Medical School. He also serves as Chief Health Policy Strategist for UMass Medical School's Center for Health Policy and Research. His professional career in research, policy development and service is dedicated to improving health care and health outcomes for those served by the public sector.
Currently, Dr. Himmelstein leads the Disability and Employment Policy Group for the Center for Health Policy and Research and is the principal investigator on the Massachusetts Medicaid Infrastructure and Comprehensive Employment Opportunities Grant (MI-CEO) funded by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This multi-year project aims to maximize employment opportunities for people with disabilities through applied research, policy analysis and infrastructure development at the state and national level.
Dr. Himmelstein also leads the Center for Health Policy and Research's Public Sector Health Information Technology Policy Group. He has been principal investigator on a number of funded projects focusing on the role of Medicaid and other human service programs can leverage investments in health information technology to improve outcomes and contain costs for those served by the public agencies.
Dr. Himmelstein is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and has served as an expert consultant the Social Security Administration, and to the Institute of Medicine, most recently as a member of the IOM Committee on Medical Evaluation of Veterans for Disability Compensation. He served as a Robert Wood Johnson National Health Policy Fellow on the health staff of Senator Edward M. Kennedy from 1991 to 1992. Dr. Himmelstein serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation and has served an ad hoc reviewer for several peer reviewed journals including Health Affairs, the Journal of the American Public Health Association, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Care Finance and Review. He currently serves on several non-profit boards including the Massachusetts Health Policy Forum and the Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts.
During his career at UMass, Dr. Himmelstein has held numerous positions in research and academic administration including Director of the Occupational and Environmental Health Program (1988-1996), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation National Health Policy Fellow (1991-1992), Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Workers Compensation Health Initiative (1994-2000), Director of the Center for Health Policy and Research (1997-2007), Director of the Center for MassHealth Evaluation and Research (1997-2002), and Assistant Chancellor for Health Policy (1992-2007).