Social and Economic Factors in Health and Health Care

The inaugural class of Medicaid Leadership Insititue Fellows gathered in Princeton, NJ for their first intensive in-person meeting on September 13-16, 2009. Among the expert faculty presenting at the meeting was Christina Paxson, PhD, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and a noted health economist. Dean Paxson focused on the connections between health status and income and the impact of those connections on individual educational and economic outcomes. Fellows were challenged to consider how multiple factors can have substantial impacts on the costs and gains from health quality improvement, especially within low-income Medicaid populations.