Michael R. Reich, PhD, MA, BA
Email: michael_reich@harvard.edu
Michael R. Reich is a political scientist who studies the political dimensions of public health policy, with particular attention to access to medicines and health system performance. He has been on the faculty at Harvard University since 1983. He began work on policies for essential medicines in the mid-1980s, when he developed teaching cases to support the essential medicines program of the World Health Organization. Since that time, he has continued to work on many issues in pharmaceutical policy, collaborating with international agencies, private foundations, public-private partnerships, private corporations, and national governments. His research has addressed various topics, including:
- National pharmaceutical policy in various countries (for example, Bangladesh, Mexico, Japan, South Korea)
- An analysis of US pharmaceutical donations
- Strategies for access to tropical disease treatments
- Indicators for monitoring national pharmaceutical policies
- Implications of orphan drug legislation for neglected diseases
- Integration of single-disease treatment programs
- Global access to ARVs
- Access to psychiatric medicines in Africa
- Access to oral contraceptives in Japan
In addition to many articles, he has published several books on pharmaceutical policy (downloadable for free; see the list below). In 2002, he edited a book called Public-Private Partnerships for Public Health. The volume includes case studies of partnerships involving specific diseases such as trachoma and river blindness, various stakeholders in both public and private sectors, and products such as medicines and vaccines.
In 2008, Reich published a book with Laura J. Frost on Access: How do Good Health Technologies Get to Poor People in Poor Countries? The book analyzes strategies for improving access to health technologies in low-income countries and was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
In 2009-11, he developed (with Marc J. Roberts) a week-long course on the reform of pharmaceutical policy in low- and middle-income countries, with a series of teaching cases, using the Flagship Framework for Health Reform, for the Medicines Transparency Alliance. The work was supported by the UK Department for International Development and was published as a book in 2011 by the World Bank.
In 2015, he became founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of the new journal Health Systems & Reform, which is the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to bridging research, theory and analysis with knowledge and experience in health systems and reform, and aims at becoming a global platform for sharing positive and normative lessons in this field.
Selected publications of interest:
Reich MR, ed. Public-Private Partnerships for Public Health. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. [Download PDF]
Frost LJ, Reich MR. Access: How Do Good Health Technologies Get to Poor People in Poor Countries? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. [Download PDF]
Roberts MJ, Reich MR. Pharmaceutical Reform: A Guide to Improving Performance and Equity. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011. [Download PDF]