Lisa Dubay

Co-Director of Policies for Action, Senior Fellow
Urban Institute

Lisa Dubay, Ph.D, is a Senior Fellow in the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center. Dr. Dubay is a nationally recognized expert on the Medicaid and CHIP programs. She is a health services researcher who has focused on evaluating the effects of public policies on access to care, health care utilization, health outcomes and health insurance coverage using quasi-experimental designs. She is currently involved in major evaluations of delivery system reform where she is leading the quantitative impact analysis of the Strong Start II demonstration testing the use of alternative evidence based prenatal care delivery practices on birth outcomes for Medicaid covered women. Dr. Dubay co-directs the Urban Institute’s cross-center initiative on the Social Determinants of Health where she works with researchers across the Institute’s policy centers. She has written extensively on race, income and place-based disparities in health and the environments in which individuals, live, learn, work and play.  

  • Since the early 1990s, Medicaid has been critical in providing insurance coverage for pregnant women with low incomes in the United States - pregnancy-related Medicaid coverage is available to women with incomes up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level in most states. Building on existing studies tracking changes in Medicaid coverage and uninsurance under the law, researchers Emily M. Johnston, Stacey McMorrow, Clara Alvarez Caraveo and Lisa Dubay examined data for new mothers with Medicaid-covered prenatal care in this study published in Health Affairs.

    April 5, 2021

  • To help people make ends meet, the United States offers a set of income supports for families with low-incomes, children, seniors and people with disabilities. Recent research from Policies for Action found these income support programs do more than reduce income inequality—they also save lives and promote health equity, particularly for women and children.

    December 14, 2020

  • In this report, P4A researchers Amelia Coffey, Eleanor Lauderback and H. Elizabeth Peters, along with their partners at the University of Oregon’s Department of Sociology Lola Loustaunau, Larissa Petrucci, Ellen Scott and Lina Stepick, examine Oregon’s implementation of S.B. 828, the first statewide predictive scheduling law in the nation, in its first year.

    September 22, 2020

  • The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one of the largest safety net programs in the United States. In 2019, the EITC reached 25 million tax filers at a total cost of $63 billion. Using variation in the federal and state EITC, Breno Braga, Fredric Blavin and Anuj Gangopadhyaya evaluated the long-term impact of EITC exposure during childhood on the health of young adults.

    September 14, 2020

  • Policies for Action is entering its fifth year with a growing community of researchers across the country and a maturing pipeline of research to support critical policy development. Find out how we're expanding the quality and reach of our work in 2020.

    January 31, 2020

  • While Earned Income Tax Credit expansions are typically associated with improvements in maternal mental health, little is known about the mechanisms through which the program affects this outcome. Anuj Gangopadhyaya, Fredric Blavin, Jason Gates, and Breno Braga of the Urban Institute assess the impact of more than two decades of federal expansions in EITC credits and the implementation of state-specific EITC programs on maternal mental health in a new working paper.

    June 29, 2019

  • How does the current housing affordability crisis widen health inequities across race and income? What are the wide-ranging effects of housing subsidies on children’s well-being or on positive aging for low-income seniors? Policies for Action is trying to answer some of these questions, and create actionable evidence for those shaping housing policies at the local, state, and federal levels.

    June 5, 2019

  • Starting this month, nine new P4A research teams will embark on projects to illuminate how policies and laws (at the local, state, and national levels, and in the private sector) can help improve population health, well-being, and equity. With topics including paid family leave laws, substance use interventions, and vaccine exemptions, our newly funded research projects represent truly innovative thinking on some of the most urgent issues of our time.

    October 30, 2017

  • Despite the billions of dollars spent each year on health care in this country, too many Americans are falling behind on key indicators of health and well-being. Yet, health care is just one piece of the puzzle. In communities across the country, people are struggling to access stable employment, safe neighborhoods, reliable transportation, and high-quality education. A growing body of evidence on these broader determinants of health makes it clear that these things matter (a lot) to our health and well-being.

    April 20, 2017