Health economist joins BC's Connell School of Nursing

Diana Bowser, a leading health economist who brings 20 years of experience in analyzing health care systems, has joined the Connell School of Nursing as associate dean for research and integrated science. She is among the first health economists on the faculties of schools of nursing in the United States.

Bowser comes to Boston College from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, where she directed the doctoral program in social policy. An expert in areas such as health financing, income inequality, and the health care workforce, Bowser has worked with the U.S. and 22 other countries to evaluate health systems and determine how policies impact patients and populations—and where needs could be better met. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College, a master’s degree in international public health from Yale University, and a doctorate in health economics from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

At the Connell School, she looks forward to continuing her work to improve health systems in collaboration with CSON’s nurses, nurse practitioners, and nurse researchers.

“Nurses are ideal clinical partners for studying health systems in various forms,” Bowser said. “They understand the symptoms at the bedside, and they know why patients are being readmitted, whether they’re facing financial burdens, or why they aren’t taking their medication. With their clinical knowledge, we can think collaboratively about how to make solutions work for entire systems.”

The kinds of issues that Bowser studies—from out-of-pocket hospital and medication costs to the financial impact of different approaches to treating COVID-19 and opioid overdoses—affect billions of people. In the wake of a global pandemic that deepened socioeconomic and racial disparities and strained health care systems around the globe, the Connell School is part of an advance guard of nursing schools that are incorporating health economics into their approach to nursing research and training.

“Assessing the economic impact of nursing care and interventions aimed at improving public health has never been more important,” said Connell School Dean Katherine Gregory. “Including a health economist like Professor Bowser in our interdisciplinary research teams will result in findings that have even greater influence over the future of clinical practice and health outcomes.”

One way in which Bowser believes nurses and NPs can help alleviate economic strain for both patients and health care systems is through preventive care and patient education, which tends to be less costly for all parties than treating active disease after it rears its head.

“To solve the problems we’re facing, I think the way of the future—and the most cost-effective way—is through prevention and primary care, where nurses play a major role,” Bowser said.

For instance, in recent years, she studied the economic and quality-of-life impacts of respiratory syntactical virus (RSV) infections in young children, which led to unprecedented pediatric hospitalization rates in 2022. This summer, the U.S. government and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that they would recommend RSV vaccinations for pregnant women and all babies under eight months. Their decision was informed in part by Bowser’s research.

“It’s always nice when something I’m working on does connect with policy change,” she said. “But there’s a lot of work to do, because our health care system in the United States is not primarily focused on prevention. I think that’s a place where CSON has the potential to be at the forefront of finding broader system solutions.”

Bowser is also studying the economic toll of the U.S. opioid epidemic and the costs of treatments such as methadone, as well as the impacts of migration from Venezuela on Colombia’s response to COVID-19. In this ongoing work, she looks forward to collaborating with her fellow faculty members, as well as with graduate and undergraduate students at the Connell School.

“I believe that Dean Gregory’s decision to hire a health economist says something about her vision for the future, and about the needs of our health care systems right now,” Bowser said. “Nurses are the cornerstone of those systems, and I hope that we can set an example for other schools of nursing.”