Marcella Alsan is an American physician and economist at Harvard Kennedy School. She is known for her works in the field of health inequality and development economics. She is currently a professor of Public Policy at the

Harvard Kennedy School The John F. Kennedy School of Government, commonly referred to as Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), is the school of public policy of Harvard University, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard Kennedy School offers master's de ...

and was previously an associate professor of medicine at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. She uses randomized evaluations and historical public health natural experiments to study how infectious disease, human capital, and economic outcomes interact. She has studied the effects of the Tuskegee Syphills Experiment on health care utilization and mortality among Black men. Alsan was awarded a

MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and colloquially called the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to typically between 20 and ...

in 2021.

Education

Alsan received a BA in psychology from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, ''magna cum laude'', a master's in international public health from the

Harvard School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school at Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. It was named after Hong Kong entrepreneur Chan Tseng-hsi in 2014 following a US$350 ...

, an MD from Loyola University ''magna cum laude'', and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. Alsan also trained with the Global Health Equity Residency in Internal Medicine at the

Brigham and Women's Hospital Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH or The Brigham) is a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest hospital in the Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Along with Massachusetts General Hospital, it is one of the two ...

and the Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Partners with BWH and

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is a teaching hospital located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the original and largest clinical education and research facility of Harvard Medical School/Harvar ...

Career

Alsan's article, "Tuskegee and the Health of Black Men", with Marianne Wanamaker, found that life expectancy for black men at age 45 fell by 1.5 years following the disclosure of the Tuskegee study in 1972. It accounts for approximately 35% of the variance in the 1980 gap in the life expectancies between black and white men. Her work on the effects of physician workforce diversity in

Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...

found that African-American subjects are much more likely to select every preventative health service when meeting a racially concordant doctor. Alsan's research on the effects of the

tsetse fly Tsetse ( , or ) (sometimes spelled tzetze; also known as tik-tik flies) are large, biting flies that inhabit much of tropical Africa. Tsetse flies include all the species in the genus ''Glossina'', which are placed in their own family, Gloss ...

on African development showed that ethnic groups living in areas with the TseTse are still affected economically due to its effects on precolonial political centralization. She also has significant publications in the areas of antimicrobial resistance and out of pocket health expenditures, infant mortality, and population health and foreign direct investment. Alsan is the co-director of the Health Care Delivery Initiative of J-PAL North America. In her role, she has studied through evaluations the impact of messaging and incentives to increase survey response rates to identify barriers to COVID-19 testing in the US, with

Banerjee Banerjee, also known as Bandyopadhyay, is a Bengali Kulin Brahmin surname originating from the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent. The surname belongs to the Rarhi clan of the Hindu Bengali Brahmin caste. History Notable people N ...

and

Duflo Duflo is a French surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Esther Duflo (born 1972), French-American economist * Marie Duflo (1940–2019), French mathematician * Michel Duflo (born 1943), French mathematician See also * Duflo isomor ...

. She has also studied the effects of diversity in COVID-19 communications on health outcomes, and the effects on messages on COVID-19 prevention on preventative behaviours in India. Alsan has conducted additional research on COVID-19 behaviours and knowledge related disparities. Alsan is on the Social Science advisory board for ''

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

'', is an editor for the ''

Journal of Health Economics The ''Journal of Health Economics'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes articles about health economics and related fields concerning human health care and medicine. The journal is published six times annually by Elsevier. The edit ...

'', and is a research associate at the

National Bureau of Economic Research The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic co ...

. Alsan was awarded a

in 2021.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alsan, Marcella Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Harvard Kennedy School faculty Harvard College alumni Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health alumni Loyola University Chicago alumni American economists Stanford University School of Medicine faculty Members of the National Academy of Medicine MacArthur Fellows