Christy Duré, MHA, MPA, is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Health Management and Policy at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health. Over her career, Ms. Duré has taught courses in public policy, public health, and healthcare administration. Her research interests encompass healthcare administration, health policy, and addressing racial and ethnic health disparities. She is deeply committed to exploring the social, environmental, and political intersections of public health and policy sectors.
Ms. Duré has used data from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) in the classroom to teach students financial concepts in healthcare. She stated, “As an educator, much of my time is spent planning, and I use a lot of data and interactive maps to help engage students with theories, their application, and policies.” She has also used PHC4’s comprehensive dataset for her own research needs.
Ms. Duré explained how students used PHC4’s Cancer Surgery Volume Report (2022 data), which provides information about the number of cancer-related surgeries performed in Pennsylvania hospitals for eleven types of cancer, and its underlying data for a classroom exercise. She explained, “Students used PHC4’s data to study a comparative reimbursement modeling case. The data helped students explore cancer surgery volume by county, type of hospitalization (private vs public), location and utilization per procedure, average charge per procedure, differences across health insurers (private/commercial vs public), and so much more. It was remarkably useful to have authentic data because most of our business cases use fictitious data.”
Ms. Duré thought PHC4’s dataset was extremely easy to access, and she continues to use it for other courses and topics such as medical debt and utilization rates. In 2024, Ms. Duré also became a member of PHC4’s Payment Data Advisory Committee, which she has found to be very rewarding and informative.
