Featured Researcher: Ellen Meara

Ellen Meara is the Peggy Y. Thomson professor of evaluative clinical sciences in the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice, and faculty co-director of the Masters of Health Care Delivery Science program at Dartmouth College. She is a research associate in the NBER’s Health Care and Aging programs.

Meara’s research explores the intersection of public policy, health care, and health outcomes. Her work has examined the effects of economic conditions, payment policy, and insurance coverage — especially Medicare and Medicaid — on utilization and outcomes. Much of this research focuses on substance abuse — including recent work on opioids — and mental illness. In addition, she has analyzed trends in medical spending as well as socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes.

Meara is currently leading research on whether mental health care treatment changes with population-based payment models such as accountable care organization contracts, and she currently leads Dartmouth’s Center of Excellence on High Performing Health Systems, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Meara is completing a term as co-editor of the Journal of Health Economics, she was co-chair of Medicare’s 2017 Technical Review Panel on the Trustees Report, and she is a member of the NBER’s Institutional Review Board and Human Subjects Committee.

Meara earned her PhD in Economics from Harvard University and her BA in Mathematical Methods for Social Sciences and Political Science from Northwestern University. Prior to joining the faculty at Dartmouth, she was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School.

Meara lives in Hanover, NH, with her husband, NBER research associate Erzo Luttmer, and their two children. She enjoys northern New England’s outdoor playground by skiing, skating, snowshoeing, hiking, biking, and swimming.