Dennis Andrulis, PhD
Associate Professor, Management, Policy & Community Health
[email protected]
Dr. Andrulis has over 30 years experience in health care research and policy focusing on vulnerable populations, their providers, and their communities. As an associate professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health, and with an affiliation with the Texas Health Institute, his recent and current work has led to numerous grant funded awards to advance health equity for racially and ethnically diverse and other vulnerable populations in three major areas: implementation of the Affordable Care Act and its equity implications related to the health care workforce, marketplaces, safety net, public health and prevention, and quality health care; prompting policies and building community resilience to the consequences of climate change; and working with community based organizations to build accountable care communities. Related to this work is the creation of a Health Equity Assessment Protocol to measure marketplace progress and developing a survey on the impact social determinants in accessing care.
From July 2015 until its completion in 2021, Dr. Andrulis served as co-investigator on a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation project to create a National Health Equity Index as part of their Culture of Health initiative. This project was a continuation of a track record that has included research on the suburbanization of poverty, emergency preparedness, the future of the safety net, AIDS cost, and financing and improving cultural and linguistic competence in healthcare.
Dr. Andrulis comes to this work from a distinct academic perspective having earned a PhD in Educational Psychology — with a focus on community — from the University of Texas at Austin and a Masters of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with postdoctoral work in Community Psychiatry.
Dr. Andrulis, in summarizing this work, has stressed how essential it is to listen to voices in communities and to recognize how closely linked their lives are to ours: “Health care is such a vital but such a small part of so many lives. To be good at what we do we must fit within the world where people live, work, play and pray. This by definition means recognizing, respecting, and working to improve the lives of others, using health care in concert with all that makes up that world.”
Additional Projects:
Toward Building Accountable Care Communities: Assessing the Influence of Social Determinants in Seeking Health Care for Newly Insured Populations
Creating a Health Equity Report Card for California, Connecticut and other Marketplaces Across the Nation
