The Thomas Parry Research Fellowship

Graduate Students from Stanford and Harvard Awarded IBI Research Support

In 2017, IBI's Board of Directors established a research fellowship in honor of its founder and President, Tom Parry. The fellowship provides generous research funding for two outstanding graduate students over the course of the upcoming year.

The fellowship was established with three main goals in mind.

1. First and most importantly, to pay homage to a researcher who stands as one of the moving forces in the field of health and productivity over the last quarter century.
2. Second, to expand and improve the evidence base for public and private investment in policies, programs, and strategies that promote long, healthy, and productive working lives.
3. To cultivate the next generation of health and productivity scholars.

IBI received nine outstanding student proposals, from the fields of public health, public policy, medicine and economics. Some proposed topics included:

• Cost-sharing and utilization of services
• Employer incentives in disability insurance
• Patient-centered medical homes
• Medication adherence in HDHPs

From these, we made two fellowship awards.

• Adelina Wang is a Ph.D. student at Stanford University's Department of Economics. Her faculty advisor is Mark Duggan, who many of you will know from numerous studies on health innovations, health insurance and public disability programs. Adelina's study will address the, costs of hospitalizations on earnings, disability and labor productivity.

• Adrienne Sabety is a Ph.D. student at Harvard University's department of Economics. Her faculty advisor is David Cutler, who has served on the Council of Economic Advisors and is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a Fellow of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Adrienne's study will examine financial security and the use of borrowing to pay for unexpected health care costs.

We look forward to welcoming these young scholars to the health and productivity community.