Laura Stilwell

I am an MD/PhD candidate in Public Policy (Economics concentration) at Duke University, Sanford School of Public Policy and Duke School of Medicine. I expect to graduate in May 2025 and plan to pursue a residency in Pediatrics.

My research combines insights from economics, public health, and clinical medicine to examine how policies and interventions impact children’s and families’ well-being. Motivated by the goal to reduce socioeconomic disparities in health and development outcomes for children in the US and abroad, my research focuses on low-income families, families and children from low-resource settings, and vulnerable pediatric patient populations. I use a variety of methods in my work, including descriptive analyses, quasi-experimental, and experimental econometric techniques. I have worked on several large-scale randomized control trials, including an ongoing study in Pakistan.

My work has been published in Academic Pediatrics, The Journal of Pediatrics, Child Maltreatment, Child Abuse & Neglect, and the Journal of Public Policy Analysis and Management, with a forthcoming publication in Social Service Review. My research has been supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the NIH (F30HD108866), Duke University Katherine Goodman Stern Fellowship, Social Science Research Council’s Charles E. Lindblom Memorial Fellowship, P.E.O. Scholar Award, among others.

Prior to graduate school, I worked as a research assistant at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab in Cambridge, MA, primarily contributing to projects in India. I graduated from MIT in 2014 with a BS in Economics.