Rebecca Haffajee, JD, PhD, MPH

Rebecca Haffajee, J.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., was appointed the Acting Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation on March 8, 2021. Before joining ASPE, she was a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and an assistant professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. A lawyer and health policy researcher, Dr. Haffajee’s work combines detailed legal analyses with empirical investigations of the relationships between policy and health. Her main research interests are behavioral health, drug policy, and public health policy. She is the recipient of multiple awards, including the AcademyHealth Outstanding Dissertation Award. Her work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Annals of Internal Medicine, Health Affairs, and JAMA Psychiatry and covered in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and National Public Radio. She received her Ph.D. in Health Policy (concentrating in evaluative sciences and statistics), J.D., and M.P.H. from Harvard. Prior to pursuing health policy research, she practiced health care law at Ropes & Gray LLP, where she advised domestic health care providers on regulatory compliance and reimbursement matters. She also served as a law fellow at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.