ABOUT

Heather Bennett, JD, PhD

Heather G. Bennett, JD, PhD applies her experiences as a political science researcher, former Executive Director of several medical professional organizations and past Counsel in the NYS Legislature, and to write, speak and conduct research about the policies that linger and continue to generate inequality in the American healthcare system.

Dr. Bennett was honored to receive the Distinguished  Dissertation Award from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, State University of New York at Albany for her research  titled “Winners and Losers in the Remaking of the American Healthcare Payment System Following the ACA: A Theory of Private-Actor Policymaking and Implications for Democratic Decision Making” in 2019.

Her current project is tentatively titled “Doomed by Design: How Hidden Policies Perpetuate Inequality in the American Healthcare System.”

Dr. Bennett notes that although her work did not start out as an examination of systemic racism within the healthcare system, it lead there and, “once I saw it, I could not unsee it.”

She lives in St. Petersburg, Florida and returns to Upstate New York each summer.