About

Sherry Glied is a Professor of Public Service at NYU Wagner and has a distinguished career in health policy and management. She served as Dean of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU from 2013 until stepping down on July 31, 2025, after which she resumed her faculty position. Prior to her tenure at NYU, she was a Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health from 1989 to 2013, where she also served as Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management from 1998 to 2009. Her government service includes confirmation by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services, a role she held from July 2010 through August 2012. She has also served as Senior Economist for health care and labor market policy on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during 1992-1993 and participated in the Clinton Health Care Task Force. Glied's research focuses on health policy reform and mental health care policy, and she has authored significant publications on health care reform and mental health policy. She holds a B.A. in economics from Yale University, an M.A. in economics from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. Her contributions to the field have been recognized through awards such as the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research and election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Medicine
• Environmental health
• Business
• Demography
• Actuarial science
• Pathology
• Virology
• Internal medicine
• Economic growth
• Finance
• Economics
• Geography

Selected publications

• Diminishing Returns—HSAs and Health Care Cost Control

  JAMA Health Forum · 2026-02-12

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This JAMA Forum discusses the rationale for health savings accounts (HSAs), the changing health insurance environment, and the reasons why HSAs are no longer containing costs.

  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of Price Transparency in Outpatient Provider Markets

  American Journal of Health Economics · 2026-02-16

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Kids Give You Headaches? Universal Prekindergarten and Maternal Prescriptions for Pain-Relief and Hormone Medications

  Health Economics · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Medicaid Per-Capita Cap Myopia

  JAMA Health Forum · 2025-01-16 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This JAMA Forum discusses past efforts to transform Medicaid financing to block grants, the arguments for and against block grants, and the potential ramifications if the incoming Republican Congress and administration make changes to Medicaid financing.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Association Between the New York State Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Lockdown and Rates of Preterm Birth and Stillbirth Among Individuals With Medicaid Insurance

  O&G Open · 2025-03-27

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  OBJECTIVE: To estimate the association between the New York State coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown and preterm birth rates among individuals with Medicaid insurance overall and by onset of delivery, and to investigate contemporaneous changes in stillbirth rates. METHODS: We used New York State Medicaid claims to conduct a quasi-experimental study of 2018-2020 hospital deliveries of liveborn neonates. We estimated the effect of the state's lockdown policy (New York State on PAUSE) on preterm birth by comparing changes in preterm birth rates before (January 1-March 21, 2020) and during the lockdown (March 22-June 8, 2020) with changes before and during the same dates in the 2 years earlier using difference-in-difference models. We stratified models into spontaneous and medically indicated preterm births. As a secondary outcome, we estimated the effect of the lockdown on stillbirth rates per 100 live births. RESULTS: There were 38,272 hospital deliveries to individuals with Medicaid insurance from January 1 to June 8, 2020, and 81,054 on the same dates in 2018 and 2019. From January to March 21, 2020, the preterm birth rate was 10.0%; roughly half were spontaneous. Using difference-in-difference models, New York State on PAUSE was associated with a nearly 1 percentage point decline (-0.93, 95% CI, -1.64 to -0.21) in the preterm birth rate. The overall difference was larger when the time period was limited to the first half of the lockdown (-1.07, 95% CI, -1.95 to -0.20). Rates of both spontaneous and medically indicated preterm birth decreased, but only the change in the rate of medically indicated preterm births was statistically significant (-0.58, 95% CI, -1.08 to -0.08). New York State on PAUSE was not associated with any change in stillbirth rates. CONCLUSION: The New York State COVID-19 lockdown was associated with a modest decline in preterm birth rates, particularly medically indicated preterm birth; there was no change in stillbirth rates. This association was particularly strong in the early part of the pandemic and was slightly more weighted toward medically indicated preterm births.

  PublisherDOI

• Data and Code for Universal Access to Counsel, Housing Court Filings, and Child Mental Health: Evidence From New York City

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2025-05-20

  datasetOpen access

  This paper examines the effect of housing instability on homelessness and children’s health. Specifically, we examine families who had a case filed against them in New York City (NYC) housing court. We ask how receiving a possessory judgment, which is the first step towards eviction, affects future housing stability and the physical and mental health of children in affected families. We merge housing court records to Medicaid claims, which feature detailed address histories, to track children’s health care utilization and housing situations before and after housing case filings. Our results show that housing court filings and possessory judgments lead to housing instability and homelessness even when they do not lead to formal eviction. Adverse housing court outcomes, in turn, lead to increased mental health diagnoses and treatment among school-aged children, especially in those without previous mental health claims. In an important extension to prior work, we find that the right to counsel not only reduces negative outcomes in housing court, but also improves housing stability and reduces child mental health claims, suggesting that the benefits of universal access to counsel go beyond the courtroom.

  PublisherDOI

• Universal Access to Counsel, Housing Court Filings, and Child Mental Health: Evidence from New York City

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2025-05-01 · 2 citations

  article

  We link data from Medicaid to housing court records to study the relationship between housing instability and children's mental health. Of Medicaid children aged 4-17 in New York City, 14 percent faced housing court from 2016-2019. Using rollout of universal access to counsel as an instrument, we find that children in families with possessory judgments are 1.6 times more likely to move, 8 times more likely to experience homelessness, and 53 percent more likely to have mental health claims. Effects are strongest for children without preexisting conditions and are not explained by use of health care more generally.

  PublisherDOI

• Aligning NIH’s Indirect Cost Recovery Rates With Foundation Rates Is Bad Policy

  JAMA Health Forum · 2025-04-17 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This JAMA Health Forum discusses recent guidance from the National Institutes of Health regarding the indirect cost recovery rate and its potential to diminish US science research and increase the influence of foundations on the operations of US universities.

  PublisherDOI

• Using Markov Modeling to Understand the Dynamics of Unhoused Populations Experiencing Serious Mental Illness

  Psychiatric Services · 2025-11-14 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  OBJECTIVE: The authors aimed to develop a model of housing interventions that accounted for the dynamic nature of homelessness (i.e., movement into and out of housing) among an unsheltered population experiencing serious mental illness. METHODS: A four-state Markov model of housing situations among adults experiencing serious mental illness in New York City was created and was used with data from the U.S. census and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Transition probabilities used in the model were based on prior studies. After calibration to steady-state (point prevalence) population estimates, the model was used to predict the effects of adding supportive housing and other housing retention interventions. RESULTS: In the base case, the population with serious mental illness and at risk for homelessness was divided among those housed, living in shelters, and experiencing chronic unsheltered homelessness. Adding approximately 2,000 units of supportive housing targeted to the chronically unsheltered population (N=2,497) reduced the size of this group by about 1,000. Supplementing this housing with retention interventions had only modest effects. Key factors driving the results were the rates at which individuals transitioned into and out of chronic unsheltered homelessness (including through institutionalization and death). CONCLUSIONS: Modest transition rates into and out of chronic unsheltered homelessness meant that, although provision of supportive housing helped vulnerable people, achieving a given absolute reduction in the chronic unsheltered census required substantially more housing units than the size of the steady-state reduction. The dynamics of homeless populations complicate policy making regarding unhoused people experiencing serious mental illness.

  PublisherDOI

• The Evolution of Medicare: Challenges, Responses, and Prospects

  Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law · 2025-02-28 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The Medicare program has provided a near-universal source of health care coverage for America's elderly since 1965. Over its 60-year history, the program has evolved to cover a greater share of the population and to pay for an increasing share of the nation's health care bills. As Medicare has grown, so too have its challenges. The traditional Medicare program has failed to keep pace with a rapidly changing health care sector and demographic shifts. Constrained by its own benefit design, Medicare has allowed privately contracted health plans (Medigap, Medicare Advantage) to provide much needed yet inadequate remedies to the program's shortcomings. After briefly recounting Medicare's origins, we discuss how the program's founding statutes have hindered its ability to respond to new and growing challenges along the dimensions of cost sharing, cost containment, and benefit design. We then propose a three-pronged approach to reforming Medicare's benefit structure. We argue that a simplified enrollment process, a single benefit that brings together the program's constituent parts (Part A, Part B, and Part D), and a new organizational structure for care delivery based on the program's experience with Accountable Care Organizations will together create a robust foundation that can sustain the Medicare program into the future.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01NR010822

  NIH · $3.0M · 2016

• NIH Grant R01MH052698

  NIH · $161k · 1995

Frequent coauthors

• Richard G. Frank

  Brookings Institution

  48 shared

• Stephen Scott

  King's College Hospital

  43 shared

• John M. McClellan

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  41 shared

• Christoph U. Correll

  Zucker Hillside Hospital

  40 shared

• Brett R. Anderson

  Child Health and Development Institute

  39 shared

• Stan Kutcher

  McGill University

  37 shared

• Fritz Mattejat

  37 shared

• Aribert Rothenberger

  36 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Health Policy and Management

  Columbia University

• M.S., Health Policy and Management

  Columbia University

• B.A., Economics

  Harvard University

Awards & honors

• William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research (2021)
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022)