Dr. Renee Hsia was recently awarded a RO1 from the NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute as co-investigator with her collaborator from the National Bureau of Economic Research, Dr. Yu-Chu Shen. They will be studying whether emergency department closures or crowding widens racial disparities in access and outcomes at patient-, facility-, and community-levels; and whether improved access as a result of ED opening can reduce such disparities. Because health policies aiming to improve efficiency of care delivery can have unintended consequences of widening health disparities, their results will offer an unusually complete picture of the potential mechanisms through which disparities can occur at different levels of care delivery, as well as inform policies with specific measures that may be applied to minimize disparities.
