Rebecca Haffajee

Rebecca L. Haffajee is a Professor in the Practice in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Yale School of Public Health. Her research combines detailed legal analyses with empirical investigations of the relationships between law and health. She explores the ways in which law facilitates or serves as a barrier to patient access to quality health care and improved population health outcomes. She substantively focuses in the behavioral health and pharmaceutical policy areas, evaluating policies such as mental health/substance abuse parity and laws intended to drug misuse and overdose, such as prescription drug monitoring programs. She is the recipient of multiple awards, including the AcademyHealth Outstanding Dissertation Award. Her work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Health Affairs, and covered in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and National Public Radio.

Dr. Haffajee began her career practicing as a regulatory health care attorney at Ropes & Gray LLP; she also worked as a law fellow at the Georgetown O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. She was an assistant professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health from 2016-2019, and subsequently she spent several years as a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Most recently, Dr. Haffajee served under the Biden-Harris Administration as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) from 2021 through 2025; she also served as the Acting ASPE and the ASPE nominee before the U.S. Senate during that time. While she led ASPE, Dr. Haffajee spearheaded various initiatives for the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Overdose Prevention Strategy, Health Disparities Council, and data and evaluation efforts for the Behavioral Health Council.

Dr. Haffajee received her received her undergraduate degree from Duke University, her J.D. from Harvard Law School, her M.P.H. from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and her Ph.D. in the evaluative sciences and statistics concentration of Harvard University’s Ph.D. Program in Health Policy.