Sharon K. Long is a former senior fellow and current nonresident fellow for the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute and an adjunct professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. Long has more than 30 years of experience conducting quantitative and qualitative policy research on health and social issues, including a number of government- and private-funded evaluations of major federal and state policy initiatives. As part of that work, she developed and directed the Urban’s Heath Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS) from 2013 to 2020, which is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Long was awarded the 2012 AcademyHealth Health Services Research Impact Award for her evaluation of the 2006 health reform initiative in Massachusetts that provided the foundation for the Affordable Care Act, the 2015 AcademyHealth Article-of-the Year Award for coauthoring “Changes in Mortality After Massachusetts Health Care Reform” in the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the 2016 American Association for Public Opinion Research Policy Impact Award for the HRMS. While continuing work with the Urban Institute, Long consults with other organizations, including with the Massachusetts’s Center for Health Information and Analysis and the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation. She has a PhD in economics from the University of North Carolina.