Han Pham

I am a PhD Candidate in Public Policy at Cornell University's Brooks School of Public Policy, with research topics in policy analysis and health economics.

My job market paper studies the location decision of physicians and discusses health workforce policies. My other papers study the use of electronic cigarettes in smoking cessation using purchase records and the teaching function of hospitals using accreditation data.

My most recent side project is using de-identified physician notes to guess patient length of stay, motivated by my interest in natural language processing and data collection.

My CV is available here.

Research

Job Market Paper

Can Funding Fix Rural Physician Shortages? Evidence from a Location Choice Model

Abstract: The supply of physicians is central to health care, especially in rural areas. This paper studies the location choice of early-career physicians as a function of location attributes, practice environment proxies via Graduate Medical Education (GME) programs, and prior ties. I find that prior ties by birth or training affiliations are a major driver of practice location: physicians have close to 50 times the odds of choosing the location where they completed residency, but these effects are significantly reduced for rural choices. Higher physician wages have little to no effect. Counterfactuals adding rural training positions show a positive impact on rural retention, though this approach works by fostering ties to the location rather than to rural practice in general. Policy implications include discussions of major policy levers —compensation and rural training expansion —as well as alternative implementations of rural health workforce policy.

ASHEcon 2025 Session

Selected Projects

Assessing New York's Healthcare Disparities Using Health Plan Quality Data (Forthcoming at The American Journal of Managed Care)

with Sean Nicholson and Joseph Stankaitis

E-cigarette Use and Smoking Cessation in Consumer Data (In Progress)

with Alan Mathios

Abstract: Despite the emergence of electronic cigarettes as a potential smoking cessation tool, empirical evidence on their effectiveness, outside of clinical trials, remains somewhat mixed. Using discrete-time survival analysis on rich set of Nielsen consumer and point-of-sale data, we find that e-cigarette use is associated with a modest decrease in cessation among buyers of e-cigarettes after controlling for demographic characteristics, household composition, and temporal effects. We identify important heterogeneity in treatment effects: smokers who previously purchased traditional cessation products (nicotine replacement therapy, prescription medications) are more likely to both try e-cigarettes and achieve cessation after e-cigarette use, suggesting that e-cigarettes may serve as substitutes for established cessation aids among traditional smokers who wish to quit.

Using Physician Notes to Predict Length of Stay: Evidence from ClinicalBERT (In Progress)

Teaching Experience

As a teaching assistant at Cornell University, I have supported courses in econometrics, health economics, and public policy analysis.

Fall 2025 — PUBPOL 5310: Applied Econometrics for Public Policy (Douglas Miller)
Spring 2025 — PUBPOL 4281 / PUBPOL 5281 / ECON 3711: The Economics and Regulations of Risky Health Behaviors (John Cawley)
Spring 2024 — PUBPOL 5673: Health Policy for Managers (Eric D. Hargan)
Spring 2023 — PAM 3870: Economic Evaluations in Health Care (Donald Kenkel)
Fall 2022 — PAM 2040: Economics of the Public Sector (Pauline Leung)
Spring 2022 — PAM 3301: Intermediate Policy Analysis (Sharon Tennyson)
Fall 2021 — PAM 2040: Economics of the Public Sector (Brandon Tripp)

Curriculum Vitae