The Jerome H. Grossman M.D. Graduate Fellowship supports talented physicians who share Dr. Grossman’s commitment and sense of urgency to bring meaningful change to the health care system by enabling them to pursue a Master in Public Policy (MPP) or Master in Public Administration (MPA) at Harvard Kennedy School.
The Jerome H. Grossman M.D. Graduate Fellowship honors the life and legacy of Dr. Grossman, who dedicated his career to strengthening health care delivery in the United States. Fellows tackle the complex and critical challenges facing the U.S. health care system by combining the practice of medicine's knowledge and experience with the public leadership and policy analysis skills to drive change at the system level.
Grossman Fellows Alisha Yi MPP/MD (HMS) 2027 and Claire Morton MPP 2026 reflect on their HKS experience as they bridge the gap between public policy and medicine.
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Alisha Yi MPP/MD (HMS) 2027
Tell us a bit about your background and why you applied to the Jerome H. Grossman M.D. Graduate Fellowship
Before beginning my first year in the MPP Program, I spent the last three years immersed in medical training, much of it on the medical wards. There, I routinely saw the consequences of fundamental inequities in health care delivery: a patient denied timely care because of insurance barriers, another whose recovery was compromised by difficult discharge planning, and an older adult readmitted after neglect in post-acute care. These daily frustrations echoed the challenges I first observed growing up in Las Vegas, a city still facing a severe health care crisis despite its rapidly growing population.
As I spent more time on the wards, it became evident that improving patient care and outcomes required understanding the body politic as much as mastering clinical skill. While these experiences honed my ability to identify barriers, I found myself wanting to have the toolkit to advocate, implement, and suggest solutions effectively. That realization compelled me to pursue multidisciplinary training in health policy.
The Grossman Fellowship has been instrumental in placing me at this critical intersection, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to pursue my studies at HKS.
What are you hoping to learn from your time at HKS?
To learn how to transform the daily frustrations on the wards into lasting systemic solutions.
My goal is to gain a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of the health care system. Who controls the levers? What drives the incentives of the different stakeholders? How do resources flow? I am also eager to understand how those outside medicine perceive health care and what values and changes they want prioritized.
I'd also like to spend this year becoming a stronger communicator and leader. Health care is—and has always been—inherently political. It is critical to speak a language that builds trust, inspires belief, and fosters understanding. I aim to gain the skills necessary to build coalitions, create shared values amid competing interests, and drive enduring vision. These abilities will shape my influence as a future physician and empower me to contribute creatively to the evolving health care landscape.
“Health care is—and has always been—inherently political. It is critical to speak a language that builds trust, inspires belief, and fosters understanding.”
Alisha Yi MPP/MD (HMS) 2027
Which concepts or ideas have resonated with you in your HKS classes given your medical background?
Medicine and policy share the same challenge: even the most principled solutions can fail without effective execution.
In API-501: Policy Design and Delivery, we often discuss implementation gaps, including why well-intentioned policies may fail those who need them most. These discussions often remind me of my patient encounters, such as an elderly male with advanced heart disease. His care plan was comprehensive on paper with optimized therapy, close follow-up, and referral to cardiac rehab. However, without reliable caregiving or transportation, much of the plan went unrealized, resulting in a readmission caused by the gap between design and real-world delivery.
HKS’s framework, like systems mapping and adaptive implementation, provided me with the language to articulate that encounter—the disconnect between planned policy and lived experience. My coursework has reinforced my belief that improving health outcomes necessitates not only clinical expertise but the foresight to anticipate and address the social, logistical, and political barriers that patients face outside the hospital.
How do medicine and public policy connect with each other?
Medicine and public policy are inseparable. Programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act shape the everyday clinical realities like: who receives care, what resources are available, and how providers respond. At the bedside, clinicians bear witness, gather evidence, and respond in real time to these downstream effects.
However, the very systems that providers work within—insurance coverage or even the definition of “value” or “standard of care”—are products of political choices. Questions about patient eligibility, outcome measurements, and financing mechanisms, among others, all reflect embedded policy. Clinical care and outcomes often reflect either the success or failure of those decisions.
For me, neither medicine nor policy can be considered in isolation when addressing health care issues. They are complementary levers that inform and synergize with one another.
How does the Grossman Fellowship enhance or align with your career goals?
The Grossman Fellowship enhances and aligns with my goal of being a physician and a writer working at the intersection of clinical care and health policy. Its mission resonates deeply with my plan to practice internal medicine while shaping reforms that improve health care access and delivery, particularly for older adults and those facing serious illness. With the support and resources the fellowship provides, I hope to bring together medicine, narrative, and policy to reimagine what caring well can mean: building health systems that allow all people to live safely, age with dignity, and face life’s end with care.
Claire Morton MPP 2026
Tell us a bit about your background and why you applied to the Jerome H. Grossman M.D. Graduate Fellowship.
My mission is inspired by my grandmothers' experiences—to improve the care we deliver to older adults and those approaching the end of their lives. In pursuit of this goal, I designed an undergraduate major while I was at Duke University titled “What It Means to Die" to focus on the biopsychosocial process of aging and death. I complemented my major by volunteering in nursing homes with dual eligible patients and interning on Capitol Hill.
After college, I spent a year working as a nursing assistant and home health aid, supporting patients who were aging in place, while furthering my policy interests through an internship with the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. As a medical student, I discovered a love of surgery and felt inspired to bring the geriatrics and palliative medicine principles I held close to a new population. I chose to apply to the Grossman Fellowship, recognizing the clinical work I do has the power to impact the patient in front of me, but policy work has the potential to impact patients I will never meet.
What are you hoping to learn from your time at HKS?
To learn from and alongside the future architects of America’s health policy. Rooted in an understanding of how our policies have come to be, I hope to learn the mechanisms for shaping the future of health care delivery.
“I chose to apply to the Grossman Fellowship, recognizing the clinical work I do has the power to impact the patient in front of me, but policy work has the potential to impact patients I will never meet.”
Claire Morton MPP 2026
Which concepts or ideas have resonated with you in your HKS classes given your medical background?
The power of narrative to shape our perceptions has been a key concept I’ve taken away from my policy classes, in addition to the need to bring organized thought processes to making hard decisions. The analytic elements of the MPP core, including statistics and economics, helped me to bring new rigor to my research work and honed my skills in new ways.
How do medicine and public policy connect with each other?
Medicine and public policy have the potential to shape people’s lives for the better. Public policy generates the environmental conditions that influence health for our patients and the contexts in which we practice.
How does the Grossman Fellowship enhance or align with your career goals?
The Grossman Fellowship has provided invaluable support in my pursuit of my key aim: improving the care we deliver to older adults and those approaching the end of life. The fellowship has armed me with new tools to use as I work to shape my career and equipped me with fresh lenses to approach my work!
Photos courtesy of Alisha Yi and Claire Morton
Jerome H. Grossman M.D. Graduate Fellowship
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