Current Health Policy Courses
Harvard Kennedy School
DPI-527M Reproductive Rights, Politics, and Policy
This course examines the historical and current state of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) policy and politics in the United States, with a particular focus on the post-Dobbs landscape. Through foundational caselaw, statutes, social science research, political commentary, and international case studies, students will gain an understanding of SRH law and politics and will use that to analyze and draft policy solutions to current SRH issues. We will discuss law as a social determinant of health, discussing how reproductive health outcomes are impacted by public policy and the role that race, gender, age, socioeconomic class, and other identities have on those outcomes. Course topics include: the creation of the Constitutional rights to privacy, contraception and abortion; historical pro-choice and pro-life social movements; abortion access for minors and marginalized populations; racism and ableism in SRH; reproductive justice; and emerging legal and political strategies.
SUP-110 Poverty and Public Policy
Safety net programs that care for the poor and insure risk comprise the largest share of government spending in the U.S. and other developed countries. Making these programs work well is a key policy priority. This course studies policy institutions and economic insights related to means-tested income support, health care, Social Security, disability, and housing support programs. The course is taught via a combination of lectures and in-class discussions and devotes special attention to current policy debates and reform ideas. The course is intended as a survey course for students seeking to broaden their understanding of how safety net programs work in developed countries and how they can be reformed to work better. It builds on topics covered in the core economics curriculum (MPP and MPA-ID), though it is open to all students with relevant economics background (see prerequisites).
SUP-500 U.S. Health Care Policy
This course provides an overview of the U.S. health care system and engages students in critically analyzing health policy issues. The course is focused around policy challenges that every health system must address: access to quality health care, equity in access, balancing costs against quality and innovation. Using an analytical lens, students will grapple with the complexity of the issues, learn to analyze policy arguments, evaluate evidence, identify tradeoffs, and recognize the limits of analytical and normative methods—critical skills for engaging constructively as informed citizens in a wide range of policy debates.
SUP-951 Doctoral Seminar in Health Economics
Explores frontier work in the field of health economics. Focuses on learning advanced theories and economic models useful for policy analysis, and on helping students develop dissertation and/or research topics. Students enrolled for credit are expected to present original research at the end of the semester.
Permission of the instructor required for nondoctoral students. (Also offered at Boston University.) Meeting location moves to the HKS in April.
Harvard Business School
HBS 6345 Field Course: Business Plans for Innovating in Health Care
The course is designed to enable students to develop and grow the business plans they developed in “Innovating in Health Care” (Course 2815, Fall Q1), which is a prerequisite to this course. Through extensive field work, weekly milestones, and individualized mentoring, students refine their ventures as they prepare to launch an innovative startup in a healthcare vertical.
Students can expect to:
- Review their existing business plan , its opportunities and challenges, and develop strategies for sustained success , including testing various go-to-market strategies and their customer acquisition costs through extensive field work. The teaching team will do their best to assure that the relevant doors are opened to you.
- Present your progress toward your goals to the class every two weeks, in a PowerPoint, and ask for the specific feedback you desire. The teaching team will review your work as mentors.
- Give feedback to your fellow highly motivated student teams and specify what you learned from giving feedback.
- Interact with expert lecturers on relevant topics such as IP strategies, VC funding, non-dilutive funding sources, obtaining a site etc.
- Receive advice from expert business mentors, who either advised you in the Fall Q1 course or are new connections to your team.
This course gives you an opportunity to work on something of great interest to you, like an Independent Project course, but preserves many of the benefits of a larger course, including opportunities for guest speakers, development of a network, feedback from your peers, and clearly delineated deliverables and milestones.
A substantial number of “Innovating in Health Care” businesses have been funded by mentors and investors they met through the course.
HBS 6215 U.S. Healthcare Strategy
This course examines the strategic challenges facing businesses in the U.S. healthcare industry. Using the lenses of business strategy, microeconomics, and health policy, students will identify and gain valuable insights into how healthcare businesses navigate complex market forces, regulatory pressures, and competitive dynamics. Cases will highlight how strategic principles can be leveraged to create opportunities in healthcare, and why some strategies are likely – or unlikely – to succeed. We will also examine the impact of government policies and regulations, both from a business standpoint and through the broader lens of societal implications.
Prominent government officials and business executives will contribute to select class sessions, complementing case discussions.
HBS 6756 Field Course: Life Sciences and Healthcare Venture Creation
The Field Course: Life Sciences and Healthcare Venture Creation (LSHVC) is designed to help students to create, launch, fund and grow ventures in the life sciences and healthcare. As part of the course, students will create and refine the business and development plans for their own innovations (founders), those of other students (joiners), and those provided by entities for use in the course (operators). LSHVC is a practical, hands-on field course primarily designed for students who are very serious about pursuing entrepreneurship within the life sciences and healthcare, including therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, health tech, wellness, tools, software & data, contract research/manufacturing and more. The course features workshops with practitioners and domain experts providing guidance and exploring how to successfully navigate critical tasks when launching a life sciences or healthcare venture. While not a prerequisite, the companion course Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Life Sciences (EILS) is often taken simultaneously in conjunction with LSHVC and provides complementary insights and education.
HBS 2185 Innovating in Health Care
This course enables students to pursue the enormous opportunity to innovate in health care. Although it is the country’s largest sector and U.S. technological and clinical resources are renowned, health care remains too costly, too inaccessible, and too fragmented. Countless important technology innovations lie fallow. These opportunities exist globally.
Innovating in Health Care (Q1) provides an analytic framework for students who want to innovate in the sector. The course is taught entirely through current, field-based case studies of health care innovations across virtually all industry verticals. It is also the prerequisite for the next two field courses: Field Course: Business Plans for Innovating in Health Care (Q2) and Field Course: Advanced Business Plans for Innovating in Health Care (Q3/Q4).
Innovating in Health Care (Q1) builds a skillset that enables students to innovate, invest in, and lead health care innovation across the industry. Many alumni have become successful entrepreneurs, investors, executives, and advisors in major health care organizations and ventures.
In this enormous market, many innovations initially seem appealing but ultimately are not viable. Innovation is often constrained by powerful incumbents, complex reimbursement systems, and stringent public policy. Using its analytical framework, Innovating in Health Care (Q1) begins with case studies on evaluating the viability of innovations. Successive modules examine how to start, scale, and exit firms that create and deliver these innovations. As a final project, students are expected to complete a business plan in an innovative healthcare vertical.
The CEOs featured in the cases typically attend class and often serve as mentors and advisors in the subsequent field courses. Through of-the-moment, field-based case studies, students address the central questions facing health care innovators: How do you differentiate a viable idea from the rest? How do you start and scale a venture? How do you successfully exit?
Many of the alumni of this course have found that they created a life-long network of colleagues with their fellow classmates, the teaching team, and their mentors.
Alumni from this course sequence have become founders and leaders of important health care firms, accomplished investors, and trusted advisors across the sector. These alumni and other experts frequently contribute to case discussions and business plan development throughout the courses.
As a three-course sequence, Innovating in Health Care and its two associated field courses enable entrepreneurially inclined students to create innovations that address these challenges through continual refinement of their business plans. Prior student teams have received substantial Series A funding, piloted innovations in leading institutions, formed significant partnerships, and won numerous business plan competition awards.
Recent student teams who completed the three courses sequence achieved significant milestones. In 2026, teams raised Series A financing; deployed pilots across approximately 40 clinical sites, including several paid pilots; became finalists in the President’s Innovation Challenge; won first and second place in the Black New Venture Competition and other venture competitions; and established partnerships with strategic organizations. These successes complemented 2025 teams that obtained $8 million in seed funding, won the HBS Shark Tank Prize, received the Grand Prize in the Social Enterprise Track of the New Ventures Competition, earned the iF Gold Design Award and a Blavatnik Fellowship, and launched an AI innovation in thirty clinics.
Students are drawn broadly from HBS and other Harvard University schools, including computer science, design and engineering, government, law, medicine, public health, and the sciences.
HBS 2195 Transforming Health Care Delivery
Susanna Gallani, Robert Huckman
At the root of the transformation occurring in the health care industry—both in the United States and internationally—is the fundamental challenge of improving health outcomes while controlling costs. Addressing this challenge requires deliberate strategic choices to improve the systems and processes by which care is delivered to patients. This, in turn, involves novel technologies, fundamentally different approaches to care delivery, a rethinking of incentives, and new roles for individuals and organizations throughout the health care sector. This course will equip students with strategies and tools to help navigate the ever-changing landscape of the health care industry.