Jay Himmelstein
Dr. Himmelstein is 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 founding Director of Work Without Limits, a Massachusetts Disability Employment initiative (www.workwithoutlimits.org). Work Without Limits is funded by a four year, $21 million dollar grant through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The primary goal of the initiative is to improve employment outcomes for people with disabilities.
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 currently serves as a Senior Fellow in Health Policy and Research at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center (NORC) with a focus on health information technology policy, Medicaid and SCHIP policy, and health reform and health care policy strategy.
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 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). Dr. Himmelstein is board certified in internal medicine and occupational and environmental health/preventive medicine. He received his bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, his medical degree from the University of Maryland Medical School, and received Masters degrees in Public Health and Physiology from the Harvard School of Public Health.
