Melinda Buntin

Vanderbilt School of Medicine and Peabody College have established a transinstitutional Policies for Action Research Hub to better understand and develop recommendations to address the needs of some of Tennessee’s most vulnerable children, including those in immigrant families and with prenatal exposure to opioids. Read More

“State Health Policy: Does Evidence Really Make a Difference” was the title of the spring Research into Policy and Practice Lecture, April 11 in Light Hall. The semi-annual lecture is sponsored by the Department of Health Policy. Read More

A new study from researchers at Vanderbilt and Harvard universities, published this week in the journal Health Affairs, uses federal health survey data to evaluate community-based efforts to address smoking, obesity and other health conditions such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Read More

Since 2014 the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, has assisted lower- and moderate-income people who buy insurance on their own on the individual market, providing premium subsidies and discounts on out-of-pocket expenses. Under the law, people who don’t carry compliant insurance face a penalty, the so-called individual mandate. Large employers who don’t offer insurance are also penalized. Read More

Social risk factors including income, education and ethnic background influence health outcomes and should be taken into account in Medicare payment models, according to a New England Journal of Medicine “Perspective” titled “Social Risk Factors and Equity in Medicare Payment.” Read More

Health care once seemed simple: You got sick, called a doctor, and paid the bill as best you could. Today health care accounts for nearly 20 percent of the total U.S. gross domestic product—about $3 trillion of economic activity annually. It’s also the largest item in the federal budget, making… Read More

In the fall of 1902, Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles, a zoologist with the U.S. Public Health Service, got a hunch that parasites were causing large swaths of the South’s rural poor to suffer an array of debilitating symptoms. Read More

With a greater focus on how the health care system functions, particularly in the wake of the 2009 Affordable Care Act, Vanderbilt has adjusted its own research and teaching programs surrounding public health and health policy. Read More

In the latest VUCast: See how TV news impacted the women's rights movement; the story of the first African American to play basketball in the SEC scores big; and experts address hot-button issues in health care. Watch now! Read More

One way to lower overall health care costs and lessen health disparities among the poor may be to allow public and private health insurers to incentivize patient adherence to evidence-based protocols for chronic diseases and conditions. Read More

Melinda Buntin, Ph.D., deputy assistant director for Health at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), will become chair of the new Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in late August. Read More