Health Economist Dr. Pinar Karaca-Mandic on Building Tools That Heal Beyond the Clinic

As someone living with type 1 diabetes who's also intrigued by the intersection of health and economics, I've always wondered how people living with chronic conditions are affected (directly and indirectly) by economic and public policy. When Dr. Archelle Georgiou, a guest from Season 1 of From Girl to Great, offered to introduce me to Dr. Pinar Karaca-Mandic (a health economist doing groundbreaking work connecting cancer patients to community resources), it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up! Dr. Karaca-Mandic's work shows how economic thinking can create tools that heal not just medical conditions, but the social challenges that often determine whether treatment succeeds or fails.

Dr. Karaca-Mandic is a health economist at the University of Minnesota, where she holds the distinguished title of McKnight University Professor and founded the Business Advancement Center for Health. She's also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and co-founded the University of Minnesota's COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project during the early days of the pandemic. Her research focuses on making healthcare more valuable and equitable for everyone. 

She is also the co-founder and CEO of XanthosHealth, a groundbreaking digital platform that connects cancer patients to community resources. But her journey to a career in health economics started in an unexpected place: a small laboratory in Turkey, watching her biochemist father and biologist mother care for patients.

What Does a Health Economist Actually Do?

"I was drawn to economics because I felt like it gave some good tools to model complex decisions in the world," Dr. Karaca-Mandic explained. But unlike traditional economists who might study consumer electronics or general markets, she applies these analytical tools to life-or-death healthcare decisions, and the results are eye-opening.

Her work focuses on "industrial organization": studying consumer behavior, firm behavior, and market incentives. But instead of analyzing why people choose one smartphone over another, she examines why a person living with type 1 diabetes might skip lifesaving insulin doses. In healthcare, this means understanding how insurance plans affect whether people take their medications, how regulations shift patient behavior, and why some medical technologies spread faster than others.

The stakes become clear with a simple example: "If you're facing a huge out-of-pocket burden for purchasing your diabetes medications, chances are you may skip some. And that has important health consequences," she told me. This is the reality she studies: how America's complex insurance web (so different from the UK's NHS system) creates impossible choices where your financial situation determines your health outcomes.

This is economics in action: understanding how money flows through healthcare directly impact whether patients get better or worse.

The Birth of Something Revolutionary

But Dr. Karaca-Mandic's most exciting work goes beyond traditional research. A few years ago, she became fascinated with using technology to collect real-time data from patients about their healthcare experiences through mobile apps. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, she founded XanthosHealth to address a critical need: cancer patients weren't just battling their disease. They were struggling with food insecurity, housing instability, transportation issues, and countless other challenges that directly impacted their treatment success.

"Health insurance is great for enabling access to affordable medications and treatments," she explained. "But even beyond health insurance, if a person has some of these health-related social need factors that are unmet (like food insecurity, or housing instability), it's just so significant for cancer patients."

This realization led to XanthosHealth, a digital platform that does something remarkable: it screens cancer patients for social needs through a mobile app, then connects them in real-time to community organizations that can help. XanthosHealth works like a bridge: patients input their needs through an app, community organizations can list their services, and clinics can track the support being provided (all through three linked portals).

What truly captured my attention was Dr. Karaca-Mandic's genuine passion for solving human problems. "This is so obvious, it should have been there," she said, echoing what everyone tells her about the platform. But the reality is that obvious solutions often go unbuilt until someone like her steps up to create them.

Dr. Karaca-Mandic isn't simply developing this solution; she's determined to prove it works through rigorous scientific testing. They are launching a randomized clinical trial to prove that addressing these social determinants of health actually improves patient outcomes and reduces healthcare costs. "We're going to be able to demonstrate whether a tool like this can improve patient outcomes, the experience of care, and even potentially reduce the overall cost of care," she said.

The Freedom to Drive Change

One thing that struck me about Dr. Karaca-Mandic's career is the incredible autonomy she has. "You drive all of that as a faculty member," she explained when I asked about her research. With her PhD, she can approach funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health with her own ideas, build her own teams, and lead groundbreaking research.

"If anybody wants to be a driver at the state-of-the-art of research and research publication, advanced graduate degrees are something they should definitely consider," she advised.

Her days are never the same: juggling active research projects, mentoring graduate students, writing proposals for new work, and yes, dealing with the less glamorous administrative side. But this variety is part of what makes the field so dynamic.

Why This Matters for Young Women in Healthcare

Dr. Karaca-Mandic's story perfectly illustrates what From Girl to Great is all about: showing young women the diverse paths available in healthcare leadership. She's not a doctor or nurse, but she's developing solutions that impact and improve the care that is discovered, accessed and received by thousands, even millions, of people fighting cancer. Her deep understanding how economics, technology, and community support intersect makes all this possible.

Her work also demonstrates something crucial: healthcare economics is a growing field. "When I was doing my PhD studies, there was not a field called healthcare economics," she told me. "But that's not the case now. It is a solid field in most top economics departments."

For those of us who are passionate about both mathematics and making a difference in people's lives, health economics offers an incredible pathway to impact. It's about using analytical tools to understand complex human behaviors and then designing systems that help people get the care they need.

What I'll Remember Most

As our conversation wrapped up and Dr. Karaca-Mandic prepared to head to her research meeting, I realized one of the things that struck me most about her work: the recognition that healthcare isn't just about medicine. It's about understanding people as whole human beings with complex needs.

Her journey from that small laboratory in Turkey to pioneering digital health solutions in Minnesota shows that with the right combination of analytical thinking, technological innovation, and genuine care for human wellbeing, we can solve problems that seemed insurmountable.

For young women considering their path in healthcare, Dr. Karaca-Mandic's story is a reminder that some of the most impactful work happens at the intersection of disciplines. Economics and healthcare, technology and community support, research and real-world application: these combinations create opportunities to change lives in ways we're only beginning to understand.

As someone passionate about using economics to drive better healthcare access for people with chronic conditions, I left this conversation more confident than ever in the path I'm pursuing. Dr. Karaca-Mandic showed me that with the right tools and perspective, we can solve problems that seemed impossible to tackle.

Thinking about a future in health economics? Here are 3 things Dr. Karaca-Mandic's journey teaches us:

• Be curious about how systems work: question why things are the way they are
• Get comfortable with data and math: they're powerful tools for understanding human behavior
• Look for where people fall through the cracks and build solutions there

A special thanks to Dr. Archelle Georgiou for the introduction. Dr. Georgiou is a physician, TV medical correspondent and the host of the podcast Speak Up for Your Health.  You can follow Dr. Georgiou’s podcast here and you can listen to my conversation with her here.

Dr. Pinar Karaca-Mandic is a health economist at the University of Minnesota and co-founder of XanthosHealth. Her work focuses on healthcare policy, insurance design, and using technology to address social determinants of health. This conversation was part of my research for season 2 of From Girl to Great, where I focus on "The Economics of Health & Opportunity."