Laura Faden Garabedian

Laura F. Garabedian, MPH, PHD is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Health Policy and Insurance Research (HPI) in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. The overarching goal of Dr. Garabedian’s research is to inform evidence-based health insurance policy to improve population health. She specializes in robust quasi-experimental research designs and analysis using large health insurance administrative and claims datasets. Her research largely falls into two buckets: (1) evaluation of state and national health insurance policies, and (2) evaluation of health insurer strategies to improve value of care delivery. Dr. Garabedian has a strong track record of conducting original, policy-relevant research and has published her work in leading medical and policy journals. Her work has been funded by NIH and foundations. She has successfully led and worked on interdisciplinary research teams and conducted research in collaboration with insurance and delivery system organizations. She serves as the Department’s Liaison to Point32Health, a large regional health insurer in New England.

In addition to her research portfolio, Dr. Garabedian has a strong commitment to teaching and training. At Harvard Medical School, she serves as Director of Essentials of the Profession, a required first-year course that covers health policy, medical ethics, social medicine, and clinical epidemiology and population health. Dr. Garabedian is the Associate Director of the Harvard-wide Fellowship in Pediatric Health Services Research, an AHRQ T32-funded fellowship, and the Co-Director of the Harvard Medical School Fellowship in Health Policy and Insurance Research. She also teaches and mentors students in the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy. 

Dr. Garabedian received her PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University, with a specialization in evaluative science and statistics. She has an MPH from Tufts and a BA from Boston University.