Penn LDI’s Eric Roberts Wins AcademyHealth Publication of the Year Award

Cited for the “Most Outstanding” Health Services Research of 2025

May 31, 2026

By:

Hoag Levins

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Eric Roberts, PhD, an LDI Senior Fellow and Associate Professor at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, has won the 2026 AcademyHealth Publication-of-the-Year Award for a study showing that loss of the Medicaid-linked Low-Income Subsidy reduced prescription filling and increased mortality among low-income Medicare patients.

Most Outstanding Contribution

The annual award recognizes the most outstanding contribution to the fields of health services research and health policy in the prior calendar year, according to AcademyHealth. It singles out a publication that has advanced the field’s ability to address issues or interventions that improve health care cost, quality, and access.

Roberts and his team’s study analyzed what happened when dually eligible Medicare-Medicaid beneficiaries lost Medicaid coverage and subsequently lost the linked Medicare prescription drug subsidy.

The work, titled “Loss of Subsidized Drug Coverage and Mortality Among Medicare Beneficiaries,” analyzed Medicare records for nearly 1.9 million dually eligible beneficiaries who lost Medicaid coverage between 2015 and 2017 and used a natural experiment based on the timing of that disenrollment. It was published in the May 14, 2025, edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Also Won SGIM Award

In May of this year, the same article won the Society of General Internal Medicine’s 2026 Best Published Research Paper of the Year Award.

Roberts research work focuses on the delivery and financing of care in U.S. public insurance programs and health care delivery systems. His research program encompasses three intersecting areas: 1) health insurance for low-income individuals with Medicare and Medicaid (“dual eligibles”), 2) Medicare and Medicaid managed care, and 3) the effects of payment and delivery system reform on health care disparities.