AcademyHealth Announces 2026 Award Recipients

Washington, D.C. (April 29, 2026)—AcademyHealth announced today the 2026 winners of its Annual Awards program. The awards program recognizes individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the fields of health services research and health policy, while advancing AcademyHealth’s mission to improve health and health care for all. 

AcademyHealth will honor the recipients of these prestigious awards throughout the 2026 Annual Research Meeting in Seattle this May 30 – June 2. The Alice S. Hersh Emerging Leader Award, Outstanding Dissertation Award, Publication-of-the-Year Award, and the Gail Wilensky Award for Impact in Health Policy, sponsored by NORC at the University of Chicago, will be recognized during the Opening Plenary, “From Novelty to Normalcy: AI and the Transformation of Health Care,” on Sunday, May 31, 2026, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. The Mosaic Award recipient will be recognized during the Monday Plenary, “Trust & Health: A New Narrative,” on Monday, June 1, 2026, from 11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The Reinhardt Distinguished Career Award recipient will be honored at the Closing Plenary, “New Partnership Paradigms That Drive Innovation and Impact,” on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, from 11:45 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. 

Reinhardt Distinguished Career Award

Neil R. Powe, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A.

The Reinhardt Distinguished Career Award is AcademyHealth’s highest honor, recognizing leaders who have made significant and lasting contributions to the field of health services research (HSR). Previously known as the Distinguished Career or Distinguished Investigator Award, the award was renamed in 2023 to honor Professor Uwe Reinhardt, a seminal figure in the field known for translating evidence into action and advancing the public interest.

Neil Powe is the Constance B. Wofsy Distinguished Professor at the University of California San Francisco and Chief of Medicine at the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, a public safety net hospital serving the poor, older adults, uninsured working families, and immigrants.  His research has advanced understanding of optimal provision of health care especially for the most vulnerable by using health services research to interrogate medical practices, payment policies and health disparities. He has studied: coverage, access, utilization, costs and financial incentives in Medicare and Medicaid, particularly for persons with kidney disease; technology coverage by health insurance plans; digitization of health records; healthcare disparities including access to transplantation; and the relation between burden of disease and NIH funding.  

Dr. Powe earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton, MD and MPH degrees from Harvard and completed residency, fellowship as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and an MBA from the Wharton Graduate School at the University of Pennsylvania. As a Wharton Public Policy Fellow he worked on health care finance in the Executive Secretariat of the Department of Health and Human Services, serving as a foundation for understanding how evidence shapes health care finance and policy decisions and preparing him for translating research into policy.  

He has served on National Academy of Medicine committees on: redesigning health insurance, benefits, payment and performance improvement programs; priorities for comparative effectiveness research; Medicare coverage of screening practices, design of the national health care disparities report, conflicts of interest, and collection/use of race in research.  He chaired the National Academy of Social Insurance Committee on COVID pandemic implications for social insurance, the AHRQ National Advisory Committee, the JAMA Oversight Committee, and the National Advisory Committee of the Amos Institute for Medical Faculty Development where he mentors and advances careers of health services researchers who are addressing major challenges in health care delivery and health policy. He has served as Chief Scientific Officer of the Commonwealth Fund and as member of the PCORI Methodology Committee.  At AcademyHealth he has served on the Board of Directors, Article-of-the-Year Review Committee, Annual Research Meeting Planning Committee, and Diversity Career Development Committee.  

He was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, American Society of Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He was recognized with the TIME100 award in 2024 as one of the most influential people in health, the John M. Eisenberg Award for Career Achievement in Research and Robert J. Glaser Award from the Society of General Internal Medicine, the Herbert W. Nickens Award from the AAMC, and the John Phillips Memorial Award for Distinguished Contributions from the American College of Physicians. He has testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the Medicare End Stage Renal Disease Program and before the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress on technology, innovation and health care costs. 

Alice S. Hersh Emerging Leader Award

Kevin H. Nguyen, Ph.D.

The Alice S. Hersh Emerging Leader Award recognizes early-career health services researchers who demonstrate exceptional promise for contributions in research and leadership to the field.

Kevin H. Nguyen, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Law, Policy & Management at Boston University School of Public Health and Co-Director of the Boston University Medicaid Policy Lab. As a health services researcher, Dr. Nguyen examines the roles of Medicaid policies and care delivery reforms on quality and equity of care. Ongoing work spans the topics of Medicaid managed care plan performance, Medicaid accountable care organizations, safety net program participation, and inequities in patient experiences of care. His work has been covered by outlets including NPR, Kaiser Health News, and U.S. News & World Report. He earned his PhD in Health Services Research from Brown University School of Public Health, an MS in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a BSPH in Health Policy and Management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Publication-of-the-Year Award 
Loss of Subsidized Drug Coverage and Mortality Among Medicare Beneficiaries

Eric T. Roberts, Ph.D.

The Publication-of-the-Year Award recognizes the most outstanding scientific contribution to the fields of health services research and health policy published in the prior calendar year.

Eric T. Roberts, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of General Internal Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine. He is a health economist who studies the delivery and financing of care in U.S. public insurance programs and health care delivery systems. Dr. Roberts’ research program encompasses three intersecting areas: 1) health insurance for low-income individuals with Medicare and Medicaid (the “dual eligibles”), 2) Medicare and Medicaid managed care, and 3) the effects of payment and delivery system reform on health care disparities. His research uses simulation and econometric techniques for causal inference to inform policymakers and practitioners about the effects of insurance, payment, and delivery system reform policies on the care of vulnerable populations. His work has appeared in major medical and policy journals and has been funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Institute on Aging, the Veterans Health Administration, Arnold Ventures, and the Commonwealth Fund. Dr. Roberts earned his PhD in Health Economics & Policy from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.   

Outstanding Dissertation Award 
Essays in Labor and Health Economics

Sukriti Beniwal, Ph.D.

The Outstanding Dissertation Award honors an exceptional doctoral thesis that makes a substantive contribution to health services research or health policy.

Sukriti Beniwal, Ph.D., is a health economist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Georgia State University. Dr. Beniwal's research examines how healthcare policies and organizational structures shape provider behavior, service availability, and patient outcomes, with a focus on maternal health, health equity, and the role of non-physician clinicians and hospital organization models in expanding access to care for low-income populations. She relies on large-scale administrative data, including Medicaid claims and hospital cost reports, and quasi-experimental methods to answer these questions rigorously. Her research has been published in both economics and health policy journals and has received national recognition through competitive awards and fellowships.   

The Mosaic Award

Research with Expert Advisors on Drug Use (READU)

The Mosaic Award recognizes organized groups within health services and policy research (HSR) that have created a more welcoming experience and sense of community for employees and/or members with a diversity of backgrounds and experience.

Research with Expert Advisors on Drug Use (READU) is a community-based research team at the University of Washington whose members include researchers with lived and living experience of drug use and other academic staff and students who are passionate about improving services for people who use drugs. Since its founding in 2022, READU has worked on a variety of projects focused on reducing stigma and improving services for people who experience overdose in King County. In addition to supporting compassionate, evidence-based public health policy, READU works to forge strong community partnerships and expand opportunities for bi-directional learning between students and researchers with lived experience.   

Gail Wilensky Award for Impact in Health Policy, Sponsored by NORC at the University of Chicago
Ninez A. Ponce, Ph.D., M.P.P.

Established in memory of Dr. Gail Wilensky, this award recognizes leaders whose work has positively shaped U.S. health policy through the development and application of rigorous evidence.

Ninez A. Ponce, Ph.D., M.P.P., is Director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and Professor and Fred W. & Pamela K. Wasserman Endowed Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Her research and scholarship focus on racial and ethnic health disparities, health care access, and immigrant health. As Principal Investigator of the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), Dr. Ponce has taken Dr. Wilensky’s blueprint of “you can’t fix a problem if you can’t measure it” and refined it through a lens of data equity. She champions data disaggregation to demonstrate how population averages too often mask the needs of underrepresented populations.

Dr. Ponce is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Social Insurance. She served on the White House AANHPI Commission Data Disaggregation Workgroup, is an Associate Editor at JAMA Health Forum, and serves on the board of the California Health Care Foundation. She earned her Ph.D. in health services at UCLA, her master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University, and her bachelor’s degree at UC Berkeley.