Program Faculty & Staff

Dr. Avi Dor, a health economist, is a Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and Director of its Health Economics and Health Policy PhD Programs. His research focuses on a broad set of issues in health economics and finance, including hospital payments, rate setting, provider-insurer bargaining, safety-net costs and access, and vaccine mandates. To date, he is the author of 94 peer-reviewed publications in leading health economics, health policy, and medical journals. Has been an investigator on numerous NIH, AHRQ and foundations awards, including as Principal Investigator of four completed multi-site awards employing large hospital-based data and insurer-based private claims data, using econometric techniques and economic modelling. Currently he is a Principal Investigator of several awards from AHRQ, focusing on the joint determination of quality and spending at community health centers. Dr. Dor’s other affiliations include the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a joint faculty appointment at the GWU Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Administration.

Feygele Jacobs, DrPH, MS, MPH serves as Director of the Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health and Professor of Health Policy and Management. Prior to joining the faculty full-time, she was President and CEO of the RCHN Community Health Foundation (RCHN CHF), a non-profit foundation dedicated exclusively, until its sunset in 2022, to supporting and benefiting health centers and the communities and patients they serve across America. At its founding, she was the Foundation’s executive vice president and previously, executive VP and chief of staff of the Ryan Community Health Network (RCHN), the Foundation’s predecessor entity, and its affiliate CenterCare, Inc., a health center owned managed care plan serving low-income people across New York City. Her career has also included positions in both New York City’s and Boston’s public health care systems, and at a major teaching hospital network in New York. She continues to teach core courses in public health policy. In collaboration with colleagues in the Geiger Gibson Program, she has co-authored dozens of policy briefs, data notes and blog posts related to community health center policy and care for the underserved. Feygele holds a DrPH from the University of Illinois-Chicago School of Public Health, where she also completed a certificate in Public Health Informatics. She is also a graduate of Columbia University (MS, MPH) and Oberlin College. 

Leighton Ku, PhD, MPH is a Professor of Health Policy and Management in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University and is the Director of the Center for Health Policy Research. He is a nationally-known expert with over 25 years of experience on topics relating to access to health for vulnerable populations, including Medicaid, the health care safety net, state and national health reform and immigrant health. As a member of the Geiger Gibson research team for many years, he has co-authored many papers about community health centers, including papers about cost-savings related to care at health centers, the effects of Medicaid expansions and grant funding on health center capacity, and innovative staffing arrangements at health centers. Prior to coming to GW, he was at the Urban Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He helped establish the District of Columbia's Health Insurance Marketplace as a founding member of its Executive Board.

MaryBeth Musumeci J.D.  is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. Her work concentrates on Medicaid for people with disabilities, including issues related to people dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, community integration, and long-term services and supports, and Medicaid demonstration waivers. Prior to joining GW, she spent 11 years at the Kaiser Family Foundation, most recently as an Associate Director in the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Previously, she held a Reuschlein Clinical Teaching Fellowship at Villanova University School of Law and spent eight years as a civil legal aid lawyer, most recently as the Deputy Legal Advocacy Director of the Disabilities Law Program at Community Legal Aid Society, Inc. in Wilmington, Delaware. There, her practice focused on Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, other public benefits programs, and civil rights and accessibility issues. She also developed and taught a seminar in Public Benefits Law at Widener University School of Law, clerked in the Delaware Family Court, and held an Independence Foundation Public Interest Law Fellowship representing women transitioning from welfare to work in Chester, Pennsylvania. I She received her B.A. with highest honors from Douglass College, Rutgers University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Sara Rosenbaum J.D. is Professor Emerita of Health Law and Policy at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. She is  Founding Chair of the Department of Health Policy,  and founder and Director Emerita of the Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health. Professor Rosenbaum has devoted her career to health justice for medically underserved populations. Professor Rosenbaum is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, served on CDC’s Director’s Advisory Committee and Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice, and was a founding Commissioner of Congress’s Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC), which she chaired from January 2016 through April 2017. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the National Academy of Medicine’s Adam Yarmolinsky Medal, awarded for distinguished service to a member from a discipline outside the health and medical sciences and the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health Welch-Rose Award for Lifetime Contributions to the Health of the Public.

Caitlin Murphy is a Research Scientist within the Health Policy and Management Department at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. She brings over a decade of mixed-method public health research, health policy research, and health systems research in the fields of maternal and child health, women's health, reproductive health, family health, and health among low-income and vulnerable communities. She brings content expertise regarding mental health, trauma, and social determinants of health (SDH), as well as pathways for addressing SDH in healthcare settings. Previously, she supported women’s and children’s health research initiatives at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Population Services International’s Women’s Health Project, the Research Center for Leadership in Action at NYU, the World Bank Group, Population Action International, and the Ms. Foundation for Women. Ms. Murphy has a Masters’ in Public Policy Analysis from NYU Wagner with a concentration in health and gender, and is a current doctoral student in the Health Policy and Management Department at GW. 

Elizabeth Arend Dutta is a Research Scientist in the Geiger Gibson Program, which is  housed in the Department of  Health Policy and Management. Previously, she supported behavioral health and primary care safety net programs at the Primary Care Coalition in Montgomery County, MD, and served as a quality improvement advisor for the National Council for Mental Well Being in Washington, DC. Dr. Dutta has also held a range of global health system strengthening roles, including posts in South Africa, Ethiopia and Rwanda. Dr. Dutta earned a BA in Feminist and Gender Studies from Bryn Mawr College, MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and DrPH from the George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health. Her mixed-methods doctoral research examined state policies that support the peer support workforce for behavioral health.

Rebecca Morris is a Research Scientist in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the George Washington University and a PhD Candidate in Public Policy and Administration at the Trachtenberg School. She previously worked as a research analyst at Mathematica Policy Research and a research fellow at Stanford Law School. Her research areas of interest include Medicaid reform, health care access, community health centers, and social science research methods. She holds an MPP from the George Washington University, and a Bachelor of Arts in economics and mathematics from Emory University.