Alan B. Cohen

About Alan B. Cohen

Alan B. Cohen, Sc.D. is Editor of The Milbank Quarterly. He also is a retired Research Professor of Markets, Public Policy, and Law at Boston University Questrom School of Business, and Professor of Health Law, Policy and Management at Boston University School of Public Health. He was national program director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program from 2013 to 2018, and also directed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program from 1992 to 2016. At BU since 1994, he served as Executive Director of the University’s Health Policy Institute for 10 years (2003 – 2013), and directed the Questrom School’s Health Care MBA Program for nine years (19••••03). His current research interests include: health policy; health care reform; comparative health care systems; and evaluation of quality improvement initiatives. Earlier in his career, he held faculty positions at Johns Hopkins University and Brandeis University, and spent eight years at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, serving as Vice President for Research and Evaluation for five years. He is principal author of Technology in American Health Care: Policy Directions for Effective Evaluation and Management (U. Michigan, 2004); co-editor of Medicare and Medicaid at 50 (Oxford, 2015); and co-editor of The Politics and Challenges of Achieving Health Equity, a special issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law (Duke, 2017). He is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and an editorial board member of Inquiry. He served on the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s Advisory Panel on Improving Healthcare Systems (20••••15), and was a member of the International Scientific Advisory Group for the West Midlands CLAHRC in the UK (20••••18). He received his B.A. in psychology from the University of Rochester, and his M.S. and Sc.D. in health policy and management from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Experience

1. Editor

   Milbank Memorial Fund

   Aug 2018 — Present · New York, NY, US

   Editor of The Milbank Quarterly, a leading multidisciplinary journal of population health and health policy.Co-editor with Sandro Galea and Paula Lantz for the Quarterly\'s 2023 Centennial Anniversary special issue on \"The Future of Population Health: Challenges & Opportunities.\"Co-editor with Magdalena Cerda and Beth McGinty for the Quarterly\'s 2025 special issue on \"Mental Health and Substance Use Challenges Facing the United States: What Can State Policymakers Do?\"Co-editor with Paula Lantz and Steven Woolf for the Quarterly\'s 2026 special issue on \"Disease Burden, Mortality, and Life Expectancy in the United States: What Can State Policymakers Do to Meet the Challenges?\"

Education

• Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

  Sc.D., Health Services Administration

  1977 — 1983

• University of Rochester

  B.A., Psychology

  1969 — 1973

• Peter Stuyvesant H.S., New York City

  High School Diploma, Mathematics and Science

  1966 — 1969

• Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

  M.S., Health Policy and Management

  1973 — 1975

Skills

• Clinical Research
• Grants
• Key Informant Interviews
• Public Health
• Public Policy
• Impact Evaluation
• Higher Education
• Health Program Planning
• Formative Evaluation
• Health Policy
• Program Management
• Research
• Hospitals
• Program Evaluation
• Qualitative Research
• Non-Profits
• Academic Advising
• Healthcare
• Policy
• Program Development
• Healthcare Management
• Teaching
• Logic Models
• Nonprofits
• Grant Writing
• Statistics