William Watson

Health Services Researcher • PhD Candidate, UAMS

I study how insurance design, provider regulation, and geography shape access to care — combining five years of payer experience at Blue Cross Blue Shield with causal inference, administrative claims analysis, and spatial analytics.

Dissertation Research

My three-paper dissertation examines Type II diabetes through causal inference, statistical, and geospatial methods — each paper connected by a focus on how regulatory and market structures shape patients' ability to obtain care.

Paper 1 • Pharmaceutical Policy

Insulin Copay Caps Under the IRA

Difference-in-differences evaluation of the Inflation Reduction Act's capped insulin copay provision in Medicare Advantage, using IQVIA Pharmetrics Plus data.

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Paper 2 • Provider Policy

APRN Full Practice Authority

Multi-level modeling analysis of how granting APRNs full practice authority affects diabetes treatment outcomes, structured by the 5 A's of Access framework.

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Paper 3 • Spatial Epidemiology

Diabetic Foot Ulcers in Arkansas

Emerging hotspot analysis and explanatory modeling of DFU prevalence patterns to guide resource allocation and targeted intervention.

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Background

Before returning to academia, I spent five years at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arkansas across product modernization, data strategy, and senior data analysis — advising leadership on statistical analysis and healthcare trends for an organization serving over one million members. I bring that payer perspective to my research and teaching at UAMS, where I instruct graduate courses in health policy and healthcare systems.