I'm an incoming tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Division of Health Policy and Administration of the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) School of Public Health.

I am also the director of the Healthcare SHIELD (Safety net Hub for Innovation, Exploration, and Local Development), where we study the performance, functioning, and stability of the healthcare safety net and the multidimensional impacts on the communities served. Our mission is to build a better SHIELD for traditionally underserved communities through a stronger, more resilient and higher quality safety net. Our vision is to better protect the health of underserved communities and reduce the burden of disparities by answering critical policy- and practice-relevant questions through rigorous empirical research.

Here's a little bit more about me:

• 🔭 My current research is focused on optimizing the delivery of healthcare for traditionally underserved populations
• 🌱 I’m currently learning Bayesian approaches to modeling spatial data and tree-based causal inference methods
• 💬 Ask me about the health care safety net, causal inference methods, and policy-applications of data science
• 📫 How to reach me: markowskijustin@gmail.com or justin.markowski@yale.edu
• ⚡ Other Interests: I love baking, cooking, film and architecture

In my job market paper, I study the effects of competition among Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), a critical and growing part of the health care safety net. I find that FQHCs often respond like for-profit clinics, despite their safety net mandate and in some ways, to the detriment of their patients. Here is a PDF version of the latest working paper and you can find my working repository here.

I led a study on the effects of health professional shortage area (HPSA) designations on the physician workforce, conducting the first national evaluation that studies this policy over the past 50 years. This manuscript – now published in Health Affairs – explores the efficacy over the policy’s lifespan, finding little evidence of any effect on resolving the physician shortage in underserved areas and no significant change in mortality.

In another project, I study the role of Medicaid alternative payment models (APMs) on FQHCs, evaluating how explicit quality incentives and budgetary flexibility impacts clinic performance. To address this, I explore the extent to which desired and unintended consequences – such as patient selection or stinting on care – emerge. I find that APMs are successful in improving the performance of FQHCs, without inducing cream-skimming. Unlike their mixed impacts on the broader healthcare system, these results strongly demonstrate that APMs support safety net clinics by offering the budgetary flexibility and quality incentives they require to thrive.

Notably, this work brings together a set of rich datasources which I have compiled here. While often in-progress, there is a veritable trove of data here for use. Feel free to reach out with any questions and I will be more than happy to clarify!

• UDS: contains the entire 25 years of Uniform Data System. Cleaned and compiled versions of these tables can be found in the APM repository.
• Data: contains the past 10+ years of IRS form 990 tax documents for FQHCs as well as a UDS-EIN crosswalk.
• Allocation: contains geocoded FQHC care delivery locations over the past 25 years.
• (work in progress) APMs: contains a state-by-state summary of Medicaid Alternative Payment Models for FQHCs.
• (on the horizon) HPSA: a 50 year history of county-level mortality and Area Health Resource File data.