William Schpero

Dr. Schpero’s research program is focused on the Medicaid program and identifying and testing policy levers to address racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health and health care. Much of his research is designed to inform the optimal allocation of resources to support hospitals and other health care providers that serve low-income and minoritized communities in the United States. In past research, he has studied the drivers of waste in the U.S. health care system and analyzed the effect of key provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). 

As a health economist, Dr. Schpero leverages natural experiments that approximate random exposure to health care programs and policies in order to provide causal estimates to inform decision-making by policymakers and practitioners. He has served as principal investigator on grants from a range of federal and private funders — including the Commonwealth Fund, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, and National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities — focused on informing use of policy to improve health care equity in the United States. His research has been published in a number of academic journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and Health Affairs; covered by national media outlets, including Bloomberg, Politico, and The Washington Post; and cited in federal regulation and a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He is a co-founder of the Medicaid Data Learning Network, a national collaborative designed to catalyze policy-relevant research on the Medicaid program.