Ellen Meara

Last updated
Ellen Meara
Academic career
Institution The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice
National Bureau of Economic Research
Dartmouth College
Field Health economics
Alma mater Harvard University
Northwestern University
Website tdi.dartmouth.edu/faculty/ellen-meara-phd

Ellen Rose Meara is a professor at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, part of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, United States. Her research is in the fields of health economics and health policy. She is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an adjunct professor in economics at Dartmouth College. [1] [2]

Contents

Education

Meara graduated from Northwestern University in 1991, with a B.A. in Mathematical Methods for Social Sciences and Political Science and from Harvard University in 1999 with a Ph.D. in Economics. [3]

Career and research

Meara was previously as an associate professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. [3] Her research has been published in the American Journal of Psychiatry , Health Affairs , JAMA , JAMA Psychiatry , The Journal of Human Resources , Medical Care , the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal and Psychiatric Services . [2] She is an editor of the Journal of Health Economics . [4] Her research and focuses on how factors such as education, health insurance coverage, Medicare and Medicaid payment policy, and state and federal regulations are involved in shaping people's health, health care use and economic outcomes. [1]

Life expectancy

In 2008, Meara led a study which found that life expectancy was increasing in the United States, but only among those who had received 12 or more years of education. Commenting on the study, Meara said "The puzzle is why we have been successful in extending life span for some groups" but not for others, and concluded that "We need to get a better understanding of how we can extend these great things we're learning about how to lead healthier lives into these groups". [5] In a 2015, commentary on research by Angus Deaton and Anne Case on rising death rates among middle-aged white Americans, Meara and Jonathan S. Skinner explored possible explanations including racial differences in opioid prescriptions and financial pessimism. [6] [7] Meara appeared alongside Case on The Diane Rehm Show to discuss their findings. [8]

Opioid use

A 2014, study which Meara helped to lead found that roughly 4 million disabled Americans were prescribed painkillers including codeine, morphine, OxyContin and vicodin, and that one fifth of those prescriptions were for doses high enough to risk serious side effects or overdose. [9] A 2016 study led by Meara found that laws restricting the prescription, dispensation and receipt of opioids had no discernible effect on disabled Medicare recipients and had not reduced the frequency of overdoses. [10] [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naloxone</span> Opioid receptor antagonist

Naloxone is an opioid antagonist: a medication used to reverse or reduce the effects of opioids. For example, it is used to restore breathing after an opioid overdose. Effects begin within two minutes when given intravenously, five minutes when injected into a muscle, and ten minutes as a nasal spray. Naloxone blocks the effects of opioids for 30 to 90 minutes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drug overdose</span> Use of an excessive amount of a drug

A drug overdose is the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities much greater than are recommended. Typically it is used for cases when a risk to health will potentially result. An overdose may result in a toxic state or death.

Prescription drug list prices in the United States continually are among the highest in the world. The high cost of prescription drugs became a major topic of discussion in the 21st century, leading up to the American health care reform debate of 2009, and received renewed attention in 2015. One major reason for high prescription drug prices in the United States relative to other countries is the inability of government-granted monopolies in the American health care sector to use their bargaining power to negotiate lower prices, and the American payer ends up subsidizing the world's R&D spending on drugs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark McClellan</span> American health economist (born 1963)

Mark Barr McClellan is the director of the Robert J Margolis Center for Health Policy and the Margolis Professor of Business, Medicine and Health Policy at Duke University. Formerly, he was a senior fellow and director of the Health Care Innovation and Value Initiative at the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at The Brookings Institution, in Washington, D.C. McClellan served as commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration under President George W. Bush from 2002 through 2004, and subsequently as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from 2004 through 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opioid use disorder</span> Medical condition

Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a substance use disorder characterized by cravings for opioids, continued use despite physical and/or psychological deterioration, increased tolerance with use, and withdrawal symptoms after discontinuing opioids. Opioid withdrawal symptoms include nausea, muscle aches, diarrhea, trouble sleeping, agitation, and a low mood. Addiction and dependence are important components of opioid use disorder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angus Deaton</span> British-American economist (born 1945)

Sir Angus Stewart Deaton is a British-American economist and academic. Deaton is currently a Senior Scholar and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department at Princeton University. His research focuses primarily on poverty, inequality, health, wellbeing, and economic development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opioid overdose</span> Medical condition

An opioid overdose is toxicity due to excessive consumption of opioids, such as morphine, codeine, heroin, fentanyl, tramadol, and methadone. This preventable pathology can be fatal if it leads to respiratory depression, a lethal condition that can cause hypoxia from slow and shallow breathing. Other symptoms include small pupils, and unconsciousness; however, its onset can depend on the method of ingestion, the dosage and individual risk factors. Although there were over 110,000 deaths in 2017 due to opioids, individuals who survived also faced adverse complications, including permanent brain damage.

Healthcare in the United States is largely provided by private sector healthcare facilities, and paid for by a combination of public programs, private insurance, and out-of-pocket payments. The U.S. is the only developed country without a system of universal healthcare, and a significant proportion of its population lacks health insurance.

In the United States, prescription monitoring programs (PMPs) or prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) are state-run programs which collect and distribute data about the prescription and dispensation of federally controlled substances and, depending on state requirements, other potentially abusable prescription drugs. PMPs are meant to help prevent adverse drug-related events such as opioid overdoses, drug diversion, and substance abuse by decreasing the amount and/or frequency of opioid prescribing, and by identifying those patients who are obtaining prescriptions from multiple providers or those physicians overprescribing opioids.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opioid epidemic in the United States</span> Ongoing overuse of opioid medication in the US

There is an ongoing opioid epidemic in the United States, originating out of both medical prescriptions and illegal sources. The epidemic began in the United States in the late 1990s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), when opioids were increasingly prescribed for pain management, resulting in a rise in overall opioid use throughout subsequent years.

A take-home naloxone program is a governmental program that provides naloxone drug kits to those that are at risk of an opioid overdose. Naloxone is a medication that was created to reverse opioid overdoses. As an opioid antagonist, it binds to the μ-opioid receptors blocking the opioid's effects. Naloxone quickly restores normal respiration. The ongoing opioid epidemic has caused many public health authorities to expand access to naloxone.

A disease of despair is one of three classes of behavior-related medical conditions that increase in groups of people who experience despair due to a sense that their long-term social and economic prospects are bleak. The three disease types are drug overdose, suicide, and alcoholic liver disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opioid epidemic</span> Deaths due to abuse of opioid drugs

The opioid epidemic, also referred to as the opioid crisis, is the rapid increase in the overuse, misuse/abuse, and overdose deaths attributed either in part or in whole to the class of drugs called opiates/opioids since the 1990s. It includes the significant medical, social, psychological, demographic and economic consequences of the medical, non-medical, and recreational abuse of these medications.

Yuting Zhang is a professor of health economics at the University of Melbourne, and an expert on economic evaluations of health policy and healthcare reforms. She is a journal editor, award recipient, and has written numerous articles in influential journals in her field.

Opioid tapering is the reduction of opioid doses over time. Opioid tapering is typically done in people taking opioids for chronic pain. Tapering may be conducted in medically-supervised inpatient or outpatient settings.

Chinazo D. Opia Cunningham is a physician, researcher, and Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. She is also the Director of Diversity Affairs for the Department of Medicine. She worked on the frontlines during the HIV/AIDS crisis in San Francisco and in 2020 began working on the frontlines of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in New York City. She also specializes in treating patients with addiction, overseeing a network using buprenorphine to treat people with opioid addiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prescription drug addiction</span> Medical condition

Prescription drug addiction is the chronic, repeated use of a prescription drug in ways other than prescribed for, including using someone else’s prescription. A prescription drug is a pharmaceutical drug that may not be dispensed without a legal medical prescription. Drugs in this category are supervised due to their potential for misuse and substance use disorder. The classes of medications most commonly abused are opioids, central nervous system (CNS) depressants and central nervous stimulants. In particular, prescription opioid is most commonly abused in the form of prescription analgesics.

White Americans, as the largest racial group in the United States, have historically had better health outcomes than other oppressed racial groups in America. However, in recent years, the scholarly discourse has switched from recognition of the immense positive health outcomes of white Americans towards understanding the growing persistence of negative outcomes unique to this racial group. Scholars have discussed the effects of racial prejudice and its negative effect on health outcomes to not only those being oppressed but also those being given privileges. In addition to the effects of living in a racialized society, white Americans have the highest rate of suicide and lifetime psychiatric disorders of any other ethnicity or racial category. In conjunction with these psychiatric issues, the population presents higher rates of alcohol usage alongside lower levels of psychological flourishing. Given this information, the health status of white Americans has gained increasing importance due to the differences in health outcomes between white Americans and white people from other parts of the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Hadland</span> American physician and scientist

Scott E. Hadland is a Canadian-American physician and scientist who serves as a pediatrician, and addiction specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where he is the Chief of the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine. He previously served as an addiction specialist at the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center.

Kevin G. Volpp is an American behavioral economist and Mark V. Pauly President's Distinguished Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School. He is the Director of the Penn Center for Health Incentives & Behavioral Economics (CHIBE).

References

  1. 1 2 "Ellen R. Meara". Dartmouth College . Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  2. 1 2 "Ellen Meara, PhD". The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice . Retrieved June 7, 2017.
  3. 1 2 "Ellen Rose Meara" (PDF). Dartmouth College. 2016. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  4. "Journal of Health Economics Editorial Board". Elsevier.
  5. Reinberg, Steven (March 11, 2008). "Life Expectancy Tied to Education". The Washington Post . Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  6. Kolata, Gina (November 2, 2015). "Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds". The New York Times . Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  7. Cassidy, John (November 9, 2015). "Why Did the Death Rate Rise Among Middle-Aged White Americans?". The New Yorker . Retrieved June 7, 2017.
  8. "What's Behind Rising Death Rates Among Middle-Aged White Americans". The Diane Rehm Show . November 4, 2015. Retrieved June 7, 2017.
  9. Weintraub, Karen (August 15, 2014). "Millions with disabilities get heavy-duty painkillers". USA Today . Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  10. Gorenstein, Dan (June 24, 2016). "Report says state laws do little to curb opioid abuse". Marketplace. Retrieved June 7, 2017.
  11. Venosa, Ali (June 25, 2016). "State Laws Have Little Effect On Opioid Overdose Among Medicare's Disabled Beneficiaries". Medical Daily . Retrieved June 7, 2017.