Chapin White, PhD

Biography

Chapin White is a Senior Scholar at the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy & Government Service, based in its Washington, DC office. A health economist with extensive experience in the federal policy process, his work focuses on developing research, evidence, and analytical resources that help policymakers understand the consequences and tradeoffs of health policy choices.

From 2023 to 2026, Dr. White was Director of Health Analysis at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), where he led the agency’s portfolio of work on health policy and economics, including health care prices, insurance subsidies, provider supply and behavioral responses to payment policy, and preventive medicine. He previously served as CBO’s Deputy Director of Health Analysis and, earlier in his career, as a Principal Analyst. At CBO, he helped develop and evaluate policy options for Congress and directed analyses designed to be objective, transparent, and responsive to policymakers’ needs. Other prior roles include Senior Policy Researcher and Pardee RAND Graduate School faculty member at the RAND Corporation and Senior Health Researcher at the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC).

Dr. White’s research has examined health care prices, Medicare spending trends and payment policy, health insurance coverage, and the effects of alternative approaches to health reform. He has published in outlets including the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, and Health Services Research. At RAND, he led studies comparing state health reform options, including single-payer and public-option models; founded and led the early rounds of the RAND Health Care Price Transparency Initiative; and initiated RAND Hospital Data, a resource making standardized hospital financial data more accessible to researchers and policymakers.

His work has received Health Services Research’s “Best of the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting,” the RAND President’s Innovation Award, and the Health Innovation Award from the Employers’ Forum of Indiana. He earned his PhD in Health Policy and Master in Public Policy from Harvard University.