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Joel Cantor

HMN 2025: What are the promising strategies for providing health care to homeless people

December 30, 2025

“Health care providers are used to dealing with people who are deeply focused on their health, and that’s not always the case with the unhoused,” Cantor said. “If I don’t have a place to sleep or enough to eat, how can I possibly think about seeing a doctor?”

Still, Cantor said effective collaboration could help organizations stretch limited resources and meet patients where they are.

As he put it, such partnerships are not only necessary, but increasingly essential as “money is going to get tighter everywhere.”

Cantor, Yedidia Identify Strategies to Provide Health Care to Homeless

December 17, 2025

A study by Joel Cantor and Michael Yedidia published in The Milbank Quarterly found that partnerships between housing and health care organizations significantly improve services for people experiencing homelessness by making better use of limited resources. Through interviews with administrators and frontline providers in eight New Jersey programs, researchers identified strategies such as co-locating services, maintaining strong inter-organizational communication, and tailoring care to client needs.

Medicaid Work Requirements Set to Leave Millions Without Insurance

November 5, 2025

Cantor pointed out that state Medicaid agencies are feeling more stress than before, as offices are already low on resources for their current work without adding more paperwork each year, and more reach out to those who need to prove their employment.

Prof. Cantor Discusses Housing as a Public Health Issue

August 14, 2025

Homelessness nearly doubled in 2025 with the lifting of the COVID-era eviction moratorium. Cantor noted that New Jersey has focused additional resources to support residents, but needs federal help. He’s also concerned that President Donald Trump’s recent executive order punishing homelessness as a crime will make things worse.

Williams, Cantor, et al. Examine Black-White Death Inequities

June 12, 2025

This longitudinal study analyzed 2010-2020 US Census of Governments-tracked state and local government expenditures and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-tracked years of potential life lost (YPLL) to suicide and police-perpetrated killing.

What the 2nd Trump administration might mean for health insurance

December 2, 2024

The last time he held office, Donald Trump “was one vote away from repealing the Affordable Care Act,” said Cantor. “So, it’s likely that he will, at the very least, seek to reduce funding for subsidies in the ACA coverage exchanges and make other changes likely to undermine affordability and market stability in the exchanges.”

Prof. Joel Cantor Reflects on Dr. Oz’s Nomination

November 21, 2024

But big government systems take a long time to change, Cantor and others agreed, given the level of detail involved in implanting complex social service programs. “Inertia is on our side” when it comes to protecting changes New Jersey has made in Medicaid, Cantor said.

The bigger N.J. hospitals get, the harder it is for people to escape medical debt

November 13, 2024

“If you’re the dominant health system, it puts you in the driver’s seat when you go to negotiate prices or rates — you have a lot of leverage in that situation,” said Joel Cantor, director of the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy. “If you’re the hospital, that’s good. But if you’re the insured or the person paying the premiums, it isn’t great.”

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