Overview
Kacie Dragan is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Her research draws on theories and methods from both economics and epidemiology to study how health systems interact with the broader social safety net, especially through the Medicaid program. Her work often focuses on evaluating the health impacts of social policies, including in the housing, education, child welfare, and urban planning sectors. She also tackles methodological questions in health services research, like outcome measurement in claims data, statistical issues in the evaluation of social programs, sources of variation in health care utilization rates, and administrative data linkage methods. She teaches interdisciplinary courses on data analysis and research methods. Prior to joining Columbia, Kacie received her PhD from the Harvard University PhD Program in Health Policy, where she was also a 2023-2024 Radcliffe Institute fellow, and she completed a post-doctoral fellowship at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. She previously received an MPH from Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health and a BA from Barnard College.
Academic Appointments
- Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management
Credentials & Experience
Education & Training
- BA, 2014 Sociology, Barnard College,
- MPH, 2016 Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health
- PhD, 2024 Health Policy, Harvard University
Research
Selected Publications
Dragan KL. (2026) Housing Quality Improvement and Health Care Utilization: A Regression Discontinuity Study. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. 45(1): 1-15.
Dragan KL and Glied SA. (2024). Major Traffic Safety Reform and Road Traffic Injuries among Low-Income New York Residents, 2009-2021. American Journal of Public Health. 114(6): 663-641.
Crook S, Dragan K, Woo JL, Neidell M, et al. (2023) Long-Term Health Care Utilization After Cardiac Surgery in Children Covered Under Medicaid. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 81(16):1605-1617.
Dragan KL, Desai SM, Billings J, and Glied SA. (2022) Association of Insurance Mix and Diagnostic Coding Practices in New York State Hospitals. JAMA Health Forum. 2;3(9):e222919.
Dragan KL, Ellen IG, and Glied SA. (2019) Gentrification and The Health of Low-Income Children in New York City. Health Affairs. 38(9):1425-1432.
Hong K, Dragan K and Glied S. (2019) Seeing and Hearing: The Impacts of New York City’s Universal Prekindergarten Program on the Health of Low-Income Children. Journal of Health Economics. 64:93-107.
Dragan, KL. (2025). Gentrification and Health: Evidence from New York City, USA. In A Ribeiro, JP Silva, P Gullon, & T Astell-Burt (Eds.), Routledge Geographies of Health: Gentrification and Public Health. New York, NY: Routledge.