Who We Are

We are physician-researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance committed to illuminating, teaching about and eliminating health inequalities, and optimizing the health of all people living in the US. Our research and policy advocacy focuses on health care financing, insurance coverage, underinsurance, access to and quality of care for groups suffering oppression, including people of color, the poor, immigrants, victims of sexual assault, and incarcerated individuals. The CHJL is based in the Department of Medicine at the Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School. Several CHJL members also have faculty and clinical appointments at other institutions.

History

The CHJL was founded at the Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School in 1982 by Drs. Woolhandler, Himmelstein and Bor. As clinicians at a public hospital, they directly witnessed the profound unfairness of the US health care system and its adverse effects on oppressed populations. Driven by the conviction that achieving health care justice would require fundamental reforms, and the paucity of rigorous data to guide such reforms, they convened other clinician-researchers and trainees to start the CHJL. Since 2010, CHJL has been led by Dr. Danny McCormick, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard and Co-Director of Harvard’s General Medicine Fellowship Program.

Research Contributions

CHJL’s research has generated more than 200 scientific articles, most of which have appeared in leading medical and policy journals. Its scholarly contributions include seminal studies of

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medical bankruptcy

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high administrative costs of the US health care system

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analyses of the consequences of being uninsured

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adverse effects of for-profit ownership of health providers and insurers

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profit-driven misbehaviors by drug firms

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immigrants' outsized contributions to the health care system

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deficit of mental health care for minority youth

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disproportionate role of minority physicians in caring for the underserved

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racism reflected in clinical algorithms

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analyses of the impact on access to care of the Affordable Care Act

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frequency and consequences of sexual assault among young women

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