"Associate Research Director, Health Policy Impact Lab"

Overview

The Tobin Center for Economic Policy is committed to producing rigorous, policy-relevant research and bringing the resulting evidence-based insights to the policy arena for real-world impact.

The Health Policy Impact Lab, led by Tobin’s Associate Faculty Director Prof. Zack Cooper, fuses empirical research, high-level policy engagement, and top-tier communications to shift public conversations about domestic health spending, support policymakers, and raise the productivity of the U.S. health system. The Lab has helped shape both state and federal healthcare legislation, and Prof. Cooper’s research has been cited by Congress and the White House, featured widely in national media, and directly informed major legislation, including the bipartisan No Surprises Act, which protected consumers from costly medical bills and lowered health spending on the privately insured.

We are seeking an Associate Research Director to support and help grow the Lab’s portfolio of health economics and health policy research. This person will work closely with Professor Cooper and collaborators to develop research projects, co-supervise research personnel and project execution, and ensure delivery of timely, high-impact research. The Associate Research Director will play a hands-on role in producing written research outputs, including drafting and revising manuscripts.

This is an exciting opportunity for a health economist who is motivated to shape policy through rigorous scholarship and research translation. A successful candidate will bring creativity, technical skill, strong writing skills, and a capacity for mentorship to advance the Lab’s ambitious research agenda. They will be a self-starter, an excellent communicator, and someone who thrives in a mission-driven, fast-paced environment. The ideal candidate is an expert programmer fluent in multiple languages (e.g., Stata, R, SAS, Python, SQL), with deep experience using complex healthcare datasets. They will also demonstrate strong analytical leadership and judgment, along with a commitment to improving public policy through evidence and action.

Responsibilities

1. Co-supervise and help mentor a multidisciplinary team of economists, research fellows, research assistants, and students, contributing technical expertise and fostering a collaborative, high-performance culture.
2. Provide analytical leadership in the planning and implementation of major research projects and related activities.
3. Identify, establish, and maintain critical data assets to the research agenda.
4. Work with faculty and research partners to identify analytical approaches to solve specific, high-priority research questions.
5. Apply advanced econometric, statistical, and machine learning methods to descriptive and causal inference design, including data visualization to evaluate health care markets and policy reforms.
6. Take an active role in drafting, revising, and coordinating health economics manuscripts and policy papers, including aligning analytic outputs with written narratives.
7. Train and support analytic team in programming and coding and support their professional development.
8. Develop systematic and efficient approaches to projects to establish workflows that promote research quality, reproducibility, and on-time project delivery.
9. Oversee the quality, integrity, and documentation of research coding and outputs.
10. Contribute to publications and related outputs, with co-authorship opportunities commensurate with contribution.

Required Skills and Abilities

1. Strong interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across teams and with external partners.
2. Experience working with large, complex administrative and healthcare datasets.
3. Mastery of STATA and fluency in other analytical programming languages (e.g., Python, R, SAS, SQL).
4. Deep understanding of applied social science research methods, including causal inference and machine learning.
5. Demonstrated ability to translate empirical findings into clear, well-structured written narratives.
6. Exceptional organization skills, attention to detail, and ability to prioritize and manage multiple projects simultaneously.
7. PhD in economics, statistics, mathematics, data science, or a related field (or equivalent combination of education and experience).
8. Demonstrated expertise in data management, large-scale health datasets, and complex analytical design.
9. Demonstrated ability to support teams and deliver research projects of moderate to high complexity.
10. Eagerness to adopt new methods, technologies, and strategies.

Preferred Skills and Abilities

1. Familiarity with claims-based analytics and health care datasets.
2. Two years of related data analysis experience.
3. Evidence of strong research writing (e.g., working papers, dissertation papers, peer-reviewed publications, or substantial co-author contributions).

Principal Responsibilities

1. Creates a relational database from existing study data currently stored in multiple data sources. Designs comprehensive and relational databases with advance knowledge of relevant applications impacting on the data analyses and reporting.
2. Develops and documents operational procedures for the collection, editing, verification and management of study data. Documents all study data files, data structure and relationships, variable definitions and data codes. Writes detailed specifications for analysis files and performs consistency checks.
3. Develops and implements relevant statistical programs to incorporate data from multiple studies/projects.
4. Organizes and creates documents and tables related to datasets; communicates with data sources about data accuracy and data dictionary.
5. Evaluates and analyzes data using accepted statistical techniques and statistical analysis software. Performs descriptive and multivariate statistical analyses of data, using computer software.
6. Uses advanced statistical knowledge to provide support in managing and analyzing data.
7. Designs and implements quality control measures to ensure accurate collection and processing of data. Ensures the integrity of databases used in analyses through development of essential data cleaning and checks, and data back-ups.
8. Responsible for the documentation and transmission of study data. Ensures that data are collected and completed in a timely manner at each site location.
9. May perform other duties as assigned.

Required Education and Experience

Master’s degree in statistics, computer science, business administration or a related field and two years of experience in data management and analysis or equivalent combination of education and experience. Experience with data collection and in coordinating efforts of multiple groups.