Claudia Schur, Ph.D.

Claudia Schur, Ph.D., is vice president and director of the Center for Health Research and Policy at Social & Scientific Systems, Inc. (SSS). Dr. Schur has more than 20 years of experience in health policy research, survey design, and quantitative and qualitative analysis. Her research interests include access to care for vulnerable populations, the relationship between insurance coverage and health care expenditures, and the uninsured. She has led and worked on projects that have examined a wide array of topics, including public opinions of the health system, disease management, prescription drug expenditures and payment strategies for Part D, and access and quality of care for minority populations, persons living with HIV/AIDS, and the elderly.

Currently, Dr. Schur is the principal investigator on a HCFO grant that was funded under the special topic solicitation in public health systems research. Her project, “Local Public Health Capacities to Address the Needs of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations,” is evaluating the public health needs of culturally and linguistically diverse populations and whether or not these needs are being met by local health departments (LHDs). Dr. Schur and colleagues will develop detailed community multicultural profiles describing the cultural and linguistic diversity of populations served by LHDs using census data and the 2005 National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) National Profile of LHDs. They will then use those profiles to analyze the relationships between population characteristics and existing public health capacity and to identify and survey select communities for more in-depth information about serving these populations. The project aims to provide a picture of linguistic and cultural diversity in local communities, identify local public health departments serving the most diverse communities, and collect information about innovative and successful approaches to serving diverse populations. “We hope that the resulting evidence from this project will formulate policy recommendations and strategies to help local health departments better serve multicultural populations,” says Schur.

Dr. Schur was co-director of the Health Policy and Evaluation department at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. Prior to working at NORC, Dr. Schur was the deputy director at the Project HOPE Center for Health Affairs. She also spent several years as an economist at the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ). Dr. Schur received a Ph.D. in economics, with a particular focus on public finance, industrial organization, and applied microeconomics, from the University of Maryland.

For more information about Dr. Schur’s grant, please visit grants/local-public-health-capacities-address-needs-culturally-and-linguistically-diverse-population .