Ishani Ganguli, MD, MPH, Receives the 2022 Seema S. Sonnad Emerging Leader in Managed Care Research Award

The American Journal of Managed Care^® (AJMC^®) announced November 9, 2022, that Ishani Ganguli, MD, MPH, was named the recipient of the 2022 Seema S. Sonnad Emerging Leader in Managed Care Research Award.

Ganguli, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, health services researcher, former journalist and primary care physician in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, was presented with the award at the 11th Annual Patient-Centered Oncology Care^® conference presented November 9-10, in Nashville, Tennessee by The American Journal of Managed Care® (AJMC®). Making the presentation was Michael E. Chernew, PhD,
a coeditor in chief of AJMC® and the Leonard D. Schaeffer professor of Health Care Policy and director of the Healthcare Markets and Regulation Lab in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.

“AJMC® is delighted to honor Dr Ishani Ganguli with the Seema S. Sonnad Emerging Leader in Managed Care Research Award, recognizing her outstanding contributions to the field of managed care,” said Mike Hennessy Jr, president and CEO of MJH Life Sciences®, parent company of AJMC®. “Our award committee was impressed by Dr Ganguli’s efforts to disseminate her research into the public sphere through outstanding journalism, and her passion for mentoring female students—a cause that was very important to Dr Sonnad. She is highly deserving of this recognition.”

The award was established in honor of Seema S. Sonnad, PhD, former associate editor of AJMC®, who died in May 2015. Sonnad served as a mentor to many young researchers and was the inspiration for an award that recognizes and encourages early career achievements in the field of managed care.

Ganguli uses Medicare and commercial claims, survey, and electronic health record data to study primary care payment and delivery, gender equity, and the use and consequences of low-value care. For example, her work has demonstrated a national decline in primary care visit rates, evaluated the use and impact of Medicare’s Annual Wellness Visit, assessed how current and alternative physician payment models affect the gender wage gap, and shown how low-value services such as certain preoperative electrocardiograms can cascade into downstream services that can harm patients and clinicians alike. This research is deeply informed by caring for her panel of 500 primary care patients and has been covered extensively in mainstream media. Ganguli received a K23 career development award from the National Institute on Aging and has been funded by foundations including the Commonwealth Fund, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Arnold Ventures.

“I am so grateful to my mentor Dr Vinny Arora for nominating me and to the selection committee for choosing me as the recipient of the 2022 Seema S. Sonnad Emerging Leader in Managed Care Research Award,” said Ganguli. “I will work to honor Dr Sonnad’s legacy through policy-relevant health services research and by mentoring future leaders in this field.”