Marcella Alsan is an infectious disease physician and an applied microeconomist studying health inequality. She is currently a Professor of Public Policy at the

Harvard Kennedy School The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), officially the John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the school of public policy and government of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school offers master's degrees in public policy, public ...

and was previously an Associate Professor of Medicine at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. 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 commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to ...

in 2021.

Education

Alsan received a BA in psychology from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

''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 of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. The school grew out of the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers, the nation's first ...

, 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) is the second largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest hospital in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Along with Massachusetts Gener ...

and the Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Partners with BWH and

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the third oldest general hospital in the United Stat ...

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 the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

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, Glo ...

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 or Bandyopadhyay is a surname of Brahmins originating from the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent and from Bangladesh. Lineage and ancestry Banerjees are from the ancient Shandilya Gotra, which means all Banerjees are descended f ...

and Duflo. 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 endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

'', 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 ed ...

'', 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 c ...

. Alsan was awarded a

in 2021.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alsan, Marcella Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Stanford University faculty Harvard Kennedy School faculty Harvard College alumni Harvard School of Public Health alumni Loyola University Chicago alumni American economists