Austin Frakt, Ph.D., is a Health Economist and Director of the Partnered Evidence-based Policy Resource Center at the Boston VA Healthcare System. He is also an Associate Professor affiliated with the Boston University School of Public Health; a Visiting Associate Professor with the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; and an Adjunct Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute, University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Frakt is an Editor-in-Chief and a primary author of the evidence-based health policy blog The Incidental Economist. He is a regular contributor on health policy topics to The New York Times’ The Upshot and the Journal of the American Medical Association Forum.
Dr. Frakt is a senior associate editor for Health Services Research and serves on the editorial board of the American Journal of Managed Care. He is chair of the AcademyHealth Translation and Dissemination Institute Advisory Committee and is a member of the New England Comparative Effectiveness Public Advisory Council.
Dr. Frakt has conducted research studies funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Commonwealth Fund, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. His work has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Milbank Quarterly, Health Care Financing Review, Health Affairs, Health Economics, Health Services Research, International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics, Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, among other journals.
Dr. Frakt received his Ph.D. from the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in statistical and applied mathematics. He also received a master’s degree from MIT, and his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in Applied and Engineering Physics.