William Schpero

About Me

I am a health economist and an assistant professor in the Division of Health Policy and Economics of the Department of Population Health Sciences at the Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University. I am also Co-Associate Director at the Cornell Center for Health Equity, where I co-lead the research core.

I study Medicaid and the health care safety net in the United States. Through my research, I aim to identify policy levers to address racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health and health care. I am a co-founder of the Medicaid Data Learning Network and the Medicaid Insights Colloquium. In past work, I have studied the drivers of waste in the U.S. health care system and analyzed the effect of key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

My research has appeared in a number of academic journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Affairs. It has been featured by Bloomberg, CNBC, Politico, The Washington Post, and other news outlets.

I primarily teach in the executive M.B.A./M.S. in Healthcare Leadership program offered jointly by Cornell's Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management and the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences. I also actively teach and advise students in Weill Cornell's M.S. in Health Policy and Economics program, as well as students in the M.D. program.

I received my Ph.D. in health policy and economics from Yale University, during which I was also a pre-doctoral fellow in aging and health economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research. For work stemming from my dissertation, I received the Annual Student Prize from the International Health Economics Association. Before coming to Yale, I completed a master's degree and a research fellowship at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice. I received my undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College.