Health Policy Analyst

A Health Policy Analyst spends their days researching and writing. More specifically, as a Health Policy Analyst, you look at different policies and figure out things like how well they work or how they affect a specific program or organization.

You could work on pretty much any aspect of healthcare. Nonprofits, government agencies, and corporate consulting firms all employ Health Policy Analysts. Your work might involve looking at how healthcare laws affect people on Medicare, or helping to rewrite an old policy for a state’s public health office.

Say, you’re dealing with the issue of getting mental health help to the homeless. If you work for a nonprofit advocacy group for the homeless, you spend your days doing research on what types of programs work best, how other states or organizations have successfully handled the same problem, and how much all possible options would cost. You then write up your findings and get to work contacting advocates in your area, government officials, and possible healthcare providers to let them know about your ideas.

As a government Analyst working on the same problem, you also research new possible policy options. To come up with new ideas, you hold meetings with advocates and groups who, like you, are working on the issue. You then analyze the state or city budget, and write a new policy.

From the corporate side of things, you evaluate how the new policy affects your health clinics and Doctors, create new rules for your hospital, and provide the government with feedback on the new plan.