Julian Xie is the Senior Health Innovation and Evaluation Manager at Benefits Data Trust. As part of the Healthcare Innovation team, Julian leads partnerships with healthcare organizations to conduct data-driven outreach and/or referrals to BDT's contact centers to get their low-income patient populations enrolled in public benefits to improve their health outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. Julian's role also includes facilitating evaluation for BDT's Healthcare Innovation projects, increasing public benefits access programming in healthcare settings, and expanding cross-sectoral data-sharing to support focused outreach and higher quality social drivers of health programming evaluation. 

Julian completed a Master of Public Policy in 2020, where he was a Margolis Scholar in Health Policy and Management, and an MD in 2021, also from Duke University. His research in the field to date relates closely to his main interests, including food as medicine, sustainable food systems, and public food procurement.  

In 2017, he co-founded Root Causes, a Duke healthcare student organization dedicated to social drivers of health. In his time as President of Root Causes, Julian advocated for healthier hospital food environments, created community gardening programs, and launched the Fresh Produce Program, which home-delivers fresh produce to food-insecure patients referred by healthcare providers.