Douglas E. Levy, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

AB, Amherst College, 1995
MPH, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 1999
PhD, Harvard University, 2004

Dr. Levy, a researcher with expertise in statistics and evaluative sciences, has focused on reducing the harm of tobacco use as a public health and policy priority.  He is interested in investigating and influencing how public and private entities act to encourage healthy behaviors, and how those changes affect health and health care spending.  Dr. Levy has also been involved in research exploring the ethical and economic issues surrounding the diffusion of genomic medicine, and the potential to channel the emerging understanding of genetic science into improved health and health care efficiency.  He has merged his interests in genetics and tobacco, investigating physicians’ and patients’ attitudes towards genetically-tailored smoking cessation treatment. Dr. Levy was an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality post-doctoral fellow in health services research at the Harvard School of Public health before joining MIHP in 2006.

Dr. Levy is Principal Investigator on a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study inpatient efforts to provide smoking cessation services, and on an award from the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute to study children’s exposure to secondhand smoke and its relationship to health care utilization and spending.  He is collaborating on several externally-funded studies with MIHP colleagues, especially a study of the diffusion of health information technology and projects in MIHP’s  Center on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations and Health Disparities.  He has spoken at national meetings about tobacco policy, among other topics.