Julia Green

As a research associate at a health care consulting firm for the past four years, Julia Green conducted studies and crunched numbers, examining data that weighed the costs and benefits of new drugs and medical devices against standards of care. Her goal: to determine whether new interventions provided value from a payer or societal perspective. Then her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Watching her mother receive treatment, Green gained another perspective: a personal one. She was impressed by the care her mother received from oncologists, radiologists and surgeons. “Necessary or not, I was thankful for all the diagnostics and second opinions. Despite always supporting policies that could reduce costs and/or benefit the largest number of people, I also thought about how changes in health policy might affect my family’s access to care,” she says. “I reconsidered how I might react if my mother was denied a treatment solely because of its cost.”

Green is now studying epidemiology, biostatistics and economics in order to conduct research that informs best practices in health care delivery. She’s also set on reconciling the apparent conflict between quality and efficiency, research and practice, private incentives and social obligations: “I would like to spend my career trying to bridge these gaps.”