Health Policy & Management

Welcome to the Department of Health Policy and Management (HPM) at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health!

We offer full-time, part-time and executive programs leading to the masters of public health (MPH) degree. Our programs provide both academic rigor and real world relevance, and our classes have been designed to incorporate both domestic and global health concerns. Our full-time and executive management programs are accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Health Management Education (CAHME).

Our aim is to educate our students not only for the jobs they get immediately after graduation, but also for the jobs they will hold 10 years later – wherever those jobs may be. HPM graduates have been successful in the public, not-for-profit, and private healthcare arenas, as well as in local, state and national government, and in research institutes and universities.

The HPM Department participates in all the dual degree programs offered by the Mailman School of Public Health, including business, dentistry, international and public affairs, law, medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, social work, and urban planning.

HPM courses are designed to provide students with a comprehensive background in the knowledge necessary to understand and develop strategies to improve health status and health services delivery and the skills needed to implement those strategies.

We are fortunate in having a core on-site faculty, as well as an adjunct faculty that draws extensively on New York City’s broad range of distinguished institutional managers. They combine years of on-the-ground management and policy experience with top notch classroom experience, bridging the gap between academic knowledge and an applied perspective.

Our faculty has nationally recognized strengths in policy and management research and a strong publication record including prominent articles in most health policy and management journals. Our backgrounds are varied, spanning such disciplines as economics, political science, organizational psychology, medicine, law, and business. The faculty’s research agenda is broad. I am a political scientist (and a lawyer) who studies and writes about the politics of health care, with a particular emphasis on health insurance and health delivery programs for low-income populations. Other HPM faculty study health economics, provider payment systems, mental health policy, cross-national health systems, outcomes and effectiveness research, quality of life measures, organizational behavior, and strategic planning. Other Department members study health politics, policy making for competition and regulation, healthcare for the insured, cross-national health systems analysis in the United States, Europe, and developing countries; outcomes and effectiveness research; quality of life measures; and issues related to aging. Many of us are involved in collaborative research.

I hope you carefully review the school and Department web pages for information on the admissions process and our particular courses of study. Please contact us if we can help answer other questions about our program.

Dr. Michael Sparer, PhD, JD
Department Chair, Health Policy and Management