Newsletter Issue No. 2 | December 2025
Dear colleagues and friends,
As we close out 2025, I am grateful for the remarkable momentum the IU Health Economics Consortium has built across research, teaching, and partnership activities statewide and nationally. This semester highlighted the strength of our interdisciplinary community, bringing together economists, clinicians, public health scholars, data scientists, and students to address pressing health policy and health system challenges.
The successes highlighted below reflect not only the accomplishments of individual affiliates and faculty but also the broader collaborative spirit that defines IU-HEC. Thank you for your continued engagement, support, and intellectual energy. I look forward to deepening our collective work in the year ahead.
Faculty & Affiliate Highlights
Congratulations to Dr. Indrakshi Roy, IU-HEC Affiliate, on receiving a competitive NBER EC-READ Early-Stage Investigator Pilot Grant for innovative research on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
As Dr. Roy explains: “Through this project, I will build the first comprehensive database of Medicaid dementia-related policies and develop a Medicaid Generosity Index to analyze how state policy variation shapes enrollment, care use, and outcomes for people living with dementia, supporting more equitable, evidence-based Medicaid policy nationwide.”
Dr. Jesse Stewart (School of Science, Psychology) and IU-HEC Director Dr. Sumedha Gupta received a CTSI Translational Science Seed Funding Award for their project “Clinical and Economic Impact of Behavioral Health Integration in Specialty Care: Addressing a Major Barrier to Real-World Implementation.”
As Dr. Stewart explains: “This project will evaluate the Integrated Cardiac Psychology (ICP) program launched within IU Health Cardiovascular Medicine in January 2025, where cardiac psychologists and cardiologists deliver team-based care addressing patients’ biological, psychological, and social needs. The results will demonstrate ICP’s clinical value and inform its long-term sustainability within IU Health.”
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Sumedha Gupta has been appointed to the Indiana Medicaid Drug Utilization Review Board. Dr. Gupta views this appointment as both an honor and a meaningful opportunity to serve the state by contributing economic and policy insights to evidence-informed decision-making for Indiana’s Medicaid program. It also strengthens the bridge between real-time policy developments and IU-HEC’s teaching, research, and partnerships.
As the semester winds down and winter break approaches, the IU-HEC team sends warm wishes to all our colleagues, collaborators, and students. Thank you for the exceptional work, the thoughtful conversations, and the collaborative spirit that have made this year a meaningful one for our consortium.
Wishing you a low-cost, high-value holiday season with no adverse events, and abundant positive spillovers into the new year! !
Warm regards,
Sumedha Gupta, Ph.D.
Director, IU-Health Economics Consortium
Associate Professor of Economics, IU Indianapolis