Dr. Joseph Benitez is an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky (UK) in the College of Public Health and the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration. He is a health economist studying Medicaid policy and Medicaid program design. Specifically, I investigate 1) Medicaid’s viability as a safety net program for transitional poverty, 2) variation in healthcare access within the Medicaid program, and 3) the effects of adverse social conditions on Medicaid spending. He has been an assistant professor at UK since 2018. From 2015 to 2018, he was an assistant professor at the University of Louisville’s School of Public Health and Information Sciences. At UK, he is a faculty affiliate with the Center for Poverty Research, the Center for Health Equity Transformation, the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies, and the James B. Beam Institute for Kentucky Spirits; from 2022-2023, Dr. Benitez was a non-residential fellow with the KFF Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KPMU) team. Dr. Benitez received his Ph.D. in Health Policy from the University of Illinois Chicago, his MPH from the University of Kentucky, and his bachelors from the University of Georgia.