Doug Levy, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School
Health Policy Research Center
Bio
Douglas Levy, PhD is a health policy and health services researcher. His primary area of research is studying how policies around public health, healthcare finance, and health services can improve prevention and population health. Specific areas of focus include tobacco policy and epidemiology as well as behavioral economics to promote healthy foods. He also collaborates widely on studies using methods of economic evaluation to help prioritize resource use and understand competing incentives to adopt and implement alternative policies. This work is consistently undertaken with an eye towards supporting and understanding impacts for underserved communities. Dr. Levy’s research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among others.
Current Projects
National Institutes of Health
Assessing the impact of vaping control policies at the school, local and state levels
Goals: To conduct a comprehensive analysis assessing the impact of policies regulating electronic nicotine delivery systems (e-cigarettes, or ENDS) on the use of ENDS, combustible tobacco, and cannabis.
Role: Principal Investigator
National Institutes of Health
Tobacco Use and Cessation, HIV, and TB in South Africa: Clinical and Economic Outcomes
Goals: In this project we will use epidemiologic and economic data from South Africa to develop a mathematical model of tobacco use and cessation, health, and economic outcomes among smokers with both TB and HIV.
National Institutes of Health
Assessment of Biomarkers in Children to Help Parents Quit Tobacco
Goals: This randomized controlled trial will test whether adding biomarker measurement and informed outreach for TSE as part of routine practice increases identification and improves treatment, effectiveness, and sustainability of a parental tobacco control intervention that will be integrated into pediatric practice.
National Institutes of Health
Electronic Pediatric Office Systems to Support Treatment for Parental Tobacco Use
Goals: The goal of the proposed study is to integrate the CEASE (Clinical Effort Against Second hand smoke Exposure) program into an electronic health records system and test whether pairing that with a health navigator leads to better tobacco outcomes than the integrated CEASE program by itself.
President and Fellows of Harvard College
The Implementation Science Center for Cancer Control Equity: Methods Unit
Goals: Develop community-engaged approaches, rapid-cycle testing, multilevel methods, simulation modeling, and adaptive approaches that enhance effectiveness, equity, efficiency, scalability, and sustainment in equity-drive dissemination and implementation research.
National Institutes of Health
Impact of Medicaid ACO funding for health-related social needs on dietary quality and health
Goals: The goals of this study are to evaluate how Medicaid ACO Flexible Services program funding for food and housing resources affect the dietary quality, stress, heath and healthcare utilization of adult ACO participants and to assess implementation of the program.
Cambridge Hospital
Impact of State Policies on Smoking among Individuals with Substance Use Disorder
Goals: Determine the independent and interactive effects of tobacco taxation and Medicaid coverage of tobacco dependence treatments on tobacco use among individuals with substance use disorder.
Role: Principal Investigator
National Cancer Institute
Assessing the integration of tobacco cessation treatment into lung cancer screening
Goals: This project will address the integration of a virtual tobacco cessation treatment into lung cancer screening in a large integrated health care delivery system by integrating into its LDCT-LCS sites a novel, personalized, evidence-based smoking cessation intervention in English and Spanish.
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Health outcomes and health care spending among residents of smoke-free public housing
Goals: To evaluate a series of natural experiments arising from the staggered introduction of smoke-free policies in ≥27% of the state’s 241 public housing authorities.
Role: Principal Investigator
National Institutes of Health
Assessing the effect of virtual navigation interventions to improve health insurance literacy and decrease financial burden: A CCSS randomized trial
Goals: To conduct a 3-arm randomized clinical trial of 320 survivors to assess two virtual health insurance navigation interventions: HINT-S (live, synchronous navigator) and HINT-A (recorded, asynchronous navigator compared to enhanced usual care (health insurance booklet) with participants via the CCSS patient portal.
National Institutes of Health
Effectiveness of an Integrated Treatment to Address Smoking Cessation and Anxiety/Depression in People living with HIV
Goals: Strategies are needed to reduce the extraordinarily high prevalence of smoking among people living with HIV are urgently needed. The specific aims of this study are to test of efficacy of our integrated intervention (Project QUIT) in a 3-arm RCT, examine the degree to which reductions in smoking abstinence is mediated by reductions in symptoms and anxiety and other psychosocial factors, and estimate the cost-effectiveness of our intervention.
Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute
Effectiveness of Nicotine Replacement Therapy Sampling in Dental Practices
Goals: To understand the effectiveness of nicotine replacement therapy sampling in dental practices.
Role: Principal Investigator
Publications
Dr. Levy on PubMed
Education
BA, Amherst College
MPH, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
PhD, Health Policy, Harvard University