Policy and Power: How Medicaid Shapes Democracy

The Sanford School of Public Policy's 2019 PhD Distinguished Speaker is Jamila Michener, assistant professor in the department of Government at Cornell University. Her research focuses on poverty, racial inequality and public policy in the United States. The talk is free and open to the public. Metered parking is available in the Science Drive Visitor Lot.

Michener's recent book won the 2019 Virginia Gray Best Book Award which is awarded to the "best political science book published on the subject of U.S. state politics or policy in the preceding three calendar years" by the American Political Science Association. Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism and Unequal Politics (Cambridge University Press) examines how Medicaid--the nation's public health insurance program for people with low income--affects democratic citizenship. Fragmented Democracy assesses American political life from the vantage point of those who are living in or near poverty, (disproportionately) Black or Latino, and reliant on a federated government for vital resources.

Michener's research has been supported by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Ford Foundation. She received her MA and PhD from the University of Chicago and her undergraduate degree from Princeton University. Prior to working at Cornell, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at the University of Michigan