Dr. Aaron Schwartz is one of the 2020 recipients for the Rappaport Award in Clinical Innovation to focus on his project, “The Role of Private Health Insurance in Health Care Value” – this consists of two projects that will test whether private insurances plans promote high-value health care services relative to public insurance. Both projects rely on unique data from the health insurance plan Aetna, which is a research partner.

Aaron Schwartz is a health economist and physician, currently an assistant professor in the department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy and the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed MD-PhD training at Harvard Medical School and residency in internal medicine and primary care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Atrius Health. His research has explored Medicare and Medicaid policies, health care quality measurement, and the use of low-value health care services. A graduate of Swarthmore College, Dr. Schwartz received his PhD in Health Policy with an concentration in economics from the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where his dissertation was supervised by Joseph P. Newhouse, Michael E. Chernew, and J. Michael McWilliams. His research has been published in Health Affairs, JAMA Internal Medicine, and The New England Journal of Medicine, and has been featured in the Washington Post, Forbes, NPR, The New York Times and The New Yorker.