Center for State Health Policy at Rutgers Celebrates Silver Anniversary

For the past 25 years, the center has established and led research initiatives in partnership with New Jersey departments and agencies

Since 1999, Rutgers Center for State Health Policy has established itself as a trusted partner in the formulation and evaluation of health policy in New Jersey. The center’s work with New Jersey state agencies, including the state’s Medicaid program, helped earn it this reputation.

In developing its capacity to securely maintain and analyze large health data sets, center faculty and staff draw on the university’s traditional academic strengths to produce research which directly informs not just policy but practice. The center has worked with eight governors – four from each party – and its research has even informed arguments before the United States Supreme Court.

Stakeholders from across New Jersey, including nearly 200 policymakers, grant makers and academic colleagues from Rutgers University and beyond came together recently to mark the 25th anniversary of Center for State Health Policy with a symposium and celebration.

When I think of all the contributions of the Center for State Health Policy, there’s one word that really comes to mind, and that’s ‘humanity.’ The work the center has produced over the last 25 years has focused on the humanity of the lives being studied. These are not just numbers, not just populations, they are people.

Sarah Adelman

Commissioner, New Jersey Department of Human Services

“If I were to thank everyone who has supported and collaborated with the center over the past 25 years... we would be here well into the night,” Joel C. Cantor, a Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and the founding director of the center, said at the event last month. "How incredibly fortunate we have been to collaborate with such a passionate group of professionals over the past two and a half decades” across academia, state government and community organizations.

Part of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, the Center for State Health Policy was founded in 1999 with support from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) under the leadership of the Institute’s founding director, David Mechanic. An academic center with a mission to inform state health policy in New Jersey, the center is home to seven faculty, three of whom have joint appointments in other departments such as the School of Public Health and Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, as well as over 30 research and administrative staff. The analytic capacity and culture of collaboration the center has fostered has made it “a model for how New Jersey can be a leader on a whole range of health policy issues” said Brian C. Quinn, associate vice president for research-evaluation-learning at RWJF.

Quinn added that “not every state has an asset like the Center for State Health Policy, and I think it’s worth remembering how lucky we are that we’ve got them here in New Jersey.”

Over the past 25 years, the center has established and led a number of research initiatives in partnership with New Jersey departments and agencies focused on population health, access to health care and coverage, and more. Projects include:

• Evaluations of the state’s comprehensive waiver demonstrations, which allow New Jersey’s Medicaid program to introduce innovative policy changes aimed at improving access to and quality of care and health outcomes for beneficiaries.
• The New Jersey Population Health Cohort Study, also known as the NJHealth Study, seeks to improve understanding of how life events and stress affect health, particularly within historically disadvantaged groups, multigenerational families and immigrant groups.
• The New Jersey Integrated Population Health Data Project (iPHD) enables and promotes population health research by securely linking administrative data sets to support approved research projects. There have been 20 data access recipients since 2022.
• Member of the Rutgers Housing and Health Equity Cluster, where the center is working together with other Rutgers units to address health equity through housing using collaborative research, curricular innovations and community engaged work.
• The New Jersey Child Health Study, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, examined the impact of changes in the food and physical activity environment on changes in child weight status and associated behaviors over nearly a decade.

“When I think of all the contributions of the Center for State Health Policy, there’s one word that really comes to mind, and that’s ‘humanity,’” said Sarah Adelman, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Human Services. “The work the center has produced over the last 25 years has focused on the humanity of the lives being studied. These are not just numbers, not just populations, they are people.”

Adelman presented Cantor with a proclamation from Gov. Phil Murphy recognizing the center’s silver anniversary.

Since its founding, the center has expanded and diversified its research portfolio. To date, the center has initiated more than 270 projects supported by more than $134 million in grants and contracts from state and federal agencies, health-focused philantrophies and other organizations. These projects have spurred more than 1,200 publications, from journal articles and issue briefs to reports and commentaries.

In 2021, the center, leveraging its expertise in managing and analyzing Medicaid claims and encounter data, secured a multiyear research project grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and additional support from RWJF to study gaps in health service utilization among homeless adults, particularly those from rural and minority communities, and the potential of permanent supportive housing programs to mitigate these gaps.

“At Rutgers Health, we are deeply proud of the center’s enduring impact on New Jersey’s public health landscape,” said Brian Strom, chancellor of Rutgers Health. “The center exemplifies the type of work that makes Rutgers a renowned research institution – where research isn’t just an academic pursuit but a powerful driver of policies and practices that change people’s lives for the better.”

Tobias Gerhard, director of the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, and the founding director of the Rutgers Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science, acknowledged the center’s upcoming leadership transition, with Cantor stepping down as director after a quarter century.  He will remain on the faculty to focus on his extensive research portfolio.

“What has made [Joel] such an extraordinary and effective leader, and why I am so optimistic about the center’s future, is that he has infused all his values into the foundation of CSHP,” Gerhard said. “These principles are now a part of the center’s organizational DNA.”