A former Duke Internal Medicine resident, Frank Wharam has returned to Duke University after 17 years at Harvard Medical School Department of Population Medicine where he was the Martin Robison Delany endowed chair and Director of the Division of Health Policy and Insurance Research. A general internist and health policy researcher, Frank studies the impact of national and state policies on the health outcomes of chronically ill and vulnerable populations. His research often examines the effects of health insurance benefit designs, such as value-based, consumer-directed, and high-deductible health plans. Frank also focuses on interventions that affect people with substance use disorders, diabetes, obesity, mental illness, and respiratory diseases. Other interests include the adverse effects of wasteful health care spending on medical and non-medical outcomes. He has expertise in rigorous quasi-experiment research designs, causal inference in observational data, and large claims data analyses.
In addition to serving as Duke-Margolis Core Faculty member, Frank will be a Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine, where he will direct of a new center devoted to analyzing large-scale health policy effects in order to inform a more efficient and equitable health care system.
