Judith Feder is founding dean and professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy. Her research began at the Brookings Institution, continued at the Urban Institute and, since 1984, at Georgetown University (with affiliations at the Center for American Progress, 2008–11, and today at the Urban Institute). She was staff director of the congressional Pepper Commission in 1989–90; principal deputy assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services, 1993–95; the Democratic nominee for Congress in VA-10 in 2006 and 2008; and, in 2013, a member of the congressional Commission on Long-Term Care. A political scientist with a BA from Brandeis University and a master's and PhD from Harvard University, she is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Public Administration, and the National Academy of Social Insurance, and a former chair and board member of AcademyHealth.
Judith Feder; “Mind the Gap”: Researchers Ignore Politics at Their Own Risk. J Health Polit Policy Law 1 February 2016; 41 (1): 141–146. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-3445765
No matter how distasteful researchers find policy politics, effective policy requires that they engage. Drawing on her career bridging the research/politics gap in health care policy, the author makes a case for why and how researchers can do just that.
