Benjamin Sommers, M.D., Ph.D.

Benjamin Sommers, M.D., Ph.D., was appointed the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy in ASPE on January 20, 2021, and Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation on May 9, 2022. Before joining ASPE, he was the Huntley Quelch Professor of Health Care Economics at the Harvard School of Public Health, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital. He is a health economist and primary care physician whose main research interests are health policy for vulnerable populations and the health care safety net. He has received numerous awards including the Health Services Research Impact Award and the Article-of-the-Year Award from Academy Health, and the Outstanding Junior Investigator Award from the Society of General Internal Medicine. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019. From 2011-2016, he served as a senior adviser in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. His research has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of Health Economics, and Health Affairs, and covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. He received both his Ph.D. in Health Policy and his M.D. from Harvard.