Population Health and Health Policy

Education: Brown University, AB, 1972; Harvard University, EdM, 1975; Brandeis University, PhD, 1981

Areas of Expertise: Health insurance, rural health, patient safety and quality, and Medicaid policy

Dr. Coburn is a professor of public health at the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine. He has had a long-standing commitment to the application of health services research in policy decision making.

For over 25 years he and his colleagues at the Muskie School's Cutler Institute for Health and Social Policy have worked with the Medicaid programs in Maine and other states on a wide variety of collaborative research, evaluation, and policy development initiatives. In Maine, the Institute has worked with the Medicaid program to develop data and IT systems to support policy and program planning and evaluation. Using these data, Dr. Coburn has conducted research on the impact of nursing home case mix payment, home and community-based waiver programs, and Medicaid physician payment changes.

Dr. Coburn is a national expert on rural health. He is the founding director of the Maine Rural Health Research Center, one of seven national centers funded by the federal Office of Rural Health Policy (HRSA). He is a member of the Rural Policy Research Institute's Expert Health Panel and has testified many times in Washington on rural health issues. He recently served on the Institute of Medicine's Committee on the Future of Rural Health Care.