Brandeis Stories

January 7, 2026

Brandeis professor Stuart H. Altman, a pioneering health policy expert who advised five U.S. presidential administrations, died Jan. 1 in North Carolina after a brief illness. He was 88.

Altman is remembered by colleagues as both a mentor and a scholar who pushed the health policy field forward while staying connected to his roots in the classroom as a beloved teacher, mentor and colleague.

Altman was the Sol C. Chaikin Professor of National Health Policy, Emeritus, at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Over five decades at Brandeis, he embraced many roles, including as interim president in 1990-91. He was a dean of the Heller School, and was founder and co-director of the Schneider Institutes for Health Policy and Research. He retired in spring 2025, but continued to work on behalf of Heller and Brandeis, hosting a successful health policy conference and lecturing in several courses.

He influenced presidents from Richard M. Nixon through Joseph R. Biden Jr. Senators and governors regularly sought his advice, and he played a major role in shaping key Medicare funding mechanisms. He served on various state and federal policy boards, and was a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare from 1971-76. He was chairman of the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission (ProPac) from 1984 to 1996, and was appointed by Gov. Deval Patrick in 2012 as inaugural chair of the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. He was reappointed by Gov. Charles Baker to the role in 2016, and served on the commission until 2022.

His experience and credentials in the health policy arena were unparalleled, but on campus, he was known as a mentor, collaborative colleague and tireless educator who inspired generations of Brandeis students looking to enter the health policy field.

Sara Shostak, dean of the School of Social Sciences and Social Policy, said Altman provided a transformative educational experience to both undergraduate and graduate students.

“He brought to every interaction not only brilliance and rigor, but kindness and care, and was an exceptional colleague and mentor,” she said.

Constance Horgan, professor and co-director of the Schneider Institutes, said Altman had an amazing ability to convey complicated policy issues in simple ways.

“He frequently mentioned his mother’s understanding of some of the implications of Medicare issues,” Horgan said. “It was always very funny when he paraphrased her, saying something like, ‘now Stuart, do you know what Medicare is now trying to do to me? What are you going to do about it?’"

Horgan said Altman stressed the importance of family and the work/life balance, and backed it up with actions. She recalled working on deadline with Altman and Stan Wallack, the longtime head of the Schneider Institutes who died in 2015, when her daughter was going to play in a college hockey game. Rather than ask Horgan to miss the game, Altman and Wallack accompanied her to the rink, and talked about health policy in between periods.

“It was their first women’s ice hockey game and they loved it,” Horgan said. “My daughter’s team won, and I kidded Stuart about his bringing good luck to the game.”

Professor Michael Doonan, Heller PhD’02, executive director of the Massachusetts Health Policy Forum and chief administrative officer at the Schneider Institutes, said Altman was known as a “super connector” who brought together people to work through problems and come up with ideas. He was regarded as one of the most influential health policy experts in the nation, but was also a popular professor with a great sense of humor and a knack for great storytelling. Altman co-taught a course with Dr. Samuel O. Thier for a number of years that was one of the most popular on campus. (Thier, who served as university president from 1991-94, also died recently, also at 88.)

“Stuart embodied [current Brandeis President] Arthur Levine’s idea of having one ‘foot in the street and one foot in the classroom,’” Doonan said. “Stuart’s feet took him to the centers of power from statehouses to Washington.”

Karen Donelan, the Stuart H. Altman Chair in U.S. Health Policy and co-director of the Schneider Institutes for Health Policy and Research, said her academic career mentor, Robert Blendon, worked with Altman in the Nixon administration, so she “grew up” in health policy well aware of Altman’s influence. She said it was an honor to serve on committees he chaired both locally and nationally, and to assume the professorship and chair named for him.

“In both policy and research, it is rare to encounter individuals who are as comfortable as Stuart was with all kinds of people, ideas and data,” Donelan said. “He traveled the world and advised many health care leaders, but at the end of the day, he was so proud to come home to his ‘family’ at Schneider and Heller and Brandeis. We will honor his legacy always.”