Student Named 2025 Rappaport Public Policy Fellow.
Student Named 2025 Rappaport Public Policy Fellow
During the summer fellowship, MPH student Grace Reynolds will use Medicaid data to investigate the effects of extreme heat on the use of emergency health services in Massachusetts.
A School of Public Health student has been named a 2025 Rappaport Public Policy Fellow by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. During the 10-week summer fellowship, Grace Reynolds will support MassHealth in investigating the effects of extreme heat on the use of emergency health services in Massachusetts.
Working under Celia Segel, chief of staff at MassHealth, Reynolds will analyze Medicaid claims data to better understand patterns of emergency service use during periods of extreme heat with the goal of identifying the patient populations most vulnerable to heat-related health risks. She hopes that her research might in turn inform future policies that better support those most affected.
Reynolds first came to contemplate some of the less well-understood reasons for why people seek emergency care while she was working as an emergency medical technician or EMT during summers off and part time during her undergraduate studies at Williams College. By serving on ambulances based in Boston and in the northern Berkshires, she got a first-hand look at the provision of emergency medical services in both urban and rural settings. While she was on a pre-med track at the time, Reynolds says she came away from the experience more interested in system-level drivers of healthcare use and decided to instead pursue a graduate degree in public health.
“I became more interested in how different policies or a lack of social support was causing some individuals to be high utilizers of emergency services, and [I] started to think about how the system could be changed or how I would want to change the system to better support these people and offload the healthcare system a little bit,” says Reynolds, who now studies health policy and law and epidemiology and biostatistics at SPH. “Because I saw overcrowded emergency rooms and so many doctors and nurses doing their absolute best but just being overwhelmed with work.”
Over the past year, Reynolds has also worked as a health policy research analyst at Mathematica, where her work focuses largely on Medicaid. Between her studies and her job, she says, she has become much more familiar with Medicaid policymaking at the federal level, but in her application to the Rappaport fellowship, she emphasized her interest in working on policy issues specifically related to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program in Massachusetts.
Once Reynolds was selected for Rappaport funding, she met with Segel at MassHealth to discuss potential projects. Together, they determined that an interdisciplinary investigation at the nexus of emergency service use and extreme heat would be a great fit for both MassHealth’s needs and Reynold’s interests.
“There’s a pretty robust set of research already out there suggesting that extreme heat leads to higher utilization of health care services. We want to try to tease out which MassHealth members may be most at risk on high heat days,” says Reynolds. “Then, we could potentially find ways through policy that we could better support those individuals. If we find in our data, for instance, that individuals with diabetes are much more likely to utilize [emergency departments], then how can we make sure that people with diabetes get support on these days? Or if it’s individuals with asthma, which is another hypothesis we have—that people with respiratory conditions may be more at risk—how can we make sure that they are not having issues that could lead to exacerbation of their symptoms, such as not having A/C or access to medication or other supports?”
Now in its 25th year, the Rappaport Public Policy Fellowship is a key component of the Rappaport Institute, a research and policy center housed at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The Institute aims to improve the governance of Greater Boston by strengthening connections among local students, scholars, and civic leaders. Reynolds joins a cohort of other fellows, including a Boston College School of Social Work student, Mattie Harris.
“I love being able to talk with people in other local graduate programs,” says Reynolds, who will complete the practicum requirement of her MPH degree by participating in the summer fellowship. She recommends that other SPH students look into the opportunity for next year.
“Throughout the summer, there’s weekly sessions [where] we get together with the other fellows and have outings. Last week, we went to the State House and this week, we’re going to the MBTA control center,” she says. “I think the fellowship is a great way to really apply what I’m learning at SPH.”
