Anita Wagner

Anita Katharina Wagner is Associate Professor in the Division of Health Policy and Insurance Research at the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. She directs the organizational Ethics Program of Point32Health, the parent company of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan, two non-profit health insurers in the Eastern United States, and is a member of the Harvard Ethics Leaders Group.  Dr. Wagner co-directs the Harvard Medical School Fellowship in Health Policy and Insurance Research and the Department of Population Medicine Center for Cancer Policy and Program Evaluation (CarPE).

With colleagues across the world, Dr. Wagner conducts empirical research generating evidence for answering challenging health system questions.  Their work, frequently in large databases, evaluates impacts of insurance and other policy changes on the availability, access to, affordability, and use of medicines, specifically new cancer medicines, in the United States, Europe, China, and elsewhere.   

Through the Medicines and Insurance Coverage (MedIC) Initiative she founded, Dr. Wagner has led training programs, including a first online course, to strengthen capacity of professionals in more than 20 low- and middle-income country health systems to design, implement, monitor and evaluate medicines policies and programs in the context of expanding health insurance coverage.

As a pharmacoepidemiologist on the FDA’s Sentinel Initiative, Dr. Wagner has contributed to a national system that tracks the safety of pharmaceuticals in the United States.

Dr. Wagner holds a German master-equivalent degree in pharmacy, a doctorate in clinical pharmacy from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Sciences, a Master of Public Health degree in international health and a Doctor of Public Health degree in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. She completed training programs in bioethics including the Harvard Medical School Fellowship in Bioethics. In 2022-2023, she was a US Fulbright Scholar at Tampere University, Finland.

Focus Areas:

• Cancer Therapeutics
• Health Policy
• International Health