Tamara Beetham, PhD, MPH
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Tamara Beetham, PhD, MPH

Postdoctoral Research Associate Brown School of Public Health

I study how health policy and market structure affect patients' access to care and the services providers offer.

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About

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Health Services, Policy & Practice at the Brown School of Public Health. My research focuses on access to care in settings where provider incentives may not align with patient needs.

I am on the 2026–2027 academic job market, available for positions starting in 2027.

My job market paper uses AI voice agents to audit access at nearly 13,000 primary care clinics and measures how access varies with local market structure. My dissertation research, published in Health Affairs, considers how policies can “work” by reshaping which providers are in a market, not only how existing providers behave.

Publications

My research has been published in JAMA, Health Affairs, JAMA Network Open, and Annals of Internal Medicine. Papers have been recognized among the annual Best and Highest Impact selections by Annals of Internal Medicine, AcademyHealth, and the American Society of Addiction Medicine. The work has been covered widely in national media, including The New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, CNN, and Reuters.

Impact

My research has been cited in policy and clinical guidance from US federal agencies, professional societies, and state governments, including HHS proposed rulemaking on the DATA Waiver Program (42 CFR 8). I have presented findings to the US Senate, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, the Joint Commission, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Support

Research support has come from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the RAND Corporation, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies, including a NIDA R36 dissertation award and a RAND Corporation pilot project on which I served as principal investigator.

Background

I joined Brown after completing my PhD in Health Policy & Management (Economics track) at Yale and my MPH at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Featured publications

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