Program Leadership

Thomas Rice, Ph.D., Director, is Professor, Department of Health Services, UCLA School of Public Health. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to his appointment at UCLA, Dr. Rice taught for eight years at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health. His research interests include health economics, physician payment, Medicare, health services research, alternative delivery systems, and long-term care. He teaches or co-teaches courses in health economics, health care cost containment, research methods and current topics in health services.

Jack Needleman, Ph.D., Director of the Pre-Doctoral Training Program, is Associate Professor, Department of Health Services of Services, UCLA School of Public Health. Prior to joining UCLA in 2003, he was on the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health, and previous to that, was Vice President at Lewin/ICF, a Washington health policy research and consulting firm. Dr. Needleman’s research focuses on the impact of changing markets and public policy on quality and access to care. Issues he has examined include the impact of nurse staffing on patient outcomes, the quality of care for Medicaid beneficiaries with diabetes, and substance abuse. He teaches courses in health policy and research methods.

Dana Goldman, Ph.D., Director of the Post-Doctoral Training Program, is a Senior Economist at RAND and Professor of Economics in the RAND Graduate School for Public Policy Studies and Adjunct Professor of Health Services at UCLA. His research interests combine applied microeconomics and health economics, and he has published articles in leading economics, health economics, statistics, and health policy journals. Recent work addresses such diverse issues as insurance for the elderly, the cost of HIV care, the role of managed care in public insurance programs, and Medical Savings Accounts.

Geoffrey Joyce, Ph.D., Co-Director of the Post-Doctoral Training Program, is an Economist at RAND and Adjunct Associate Profesor of Health Services at UCLA. An alumnus of the UCLA post-doctoral program, he has conducted research on the impact of benefit design on pharmaceutical costs, use of medical care under alternative financing arrangements, cost-effectiveness of smoking cessation for Medicare beneficiaries, changing expenditures for HIV care, and the impact of alternative Medicare prescription drug benefits.

Ronald Andersen, Ph.D., Director-Emeritus, is Professor Emeritus of Health Services and Professor of Sociology at UCLA. He previously served for ten years as Director of the University of Chicago Center for Health Administration Studies. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from Purdue University. His research interests include access to medical care, evaluation research, international comparisons of health services systems, health care organizations' structure and management and health professions education.

Core Faculty

Department of Health Services

Gerald Kominski, Ph.D., is Professor of Health Services and Associate Dean of Public Health at UCLA. His research focuses on evaluating the costs and cost-effectiveness of medical programs and technologies, with a particular emphasis on Medicare payment policies for hospitals and physicians. His other research interests include estimating the financial impacts of alternative approaches to health care reform, and improving access and health outcomes among ethnic and vulnerable populations.

Stuart Schweitzer, Ph.D., is Professor of Health Services in the UCLA School of Public Health. His research interests are in the areas of health policy, especially as they pertain to pharmaceuticals, gerontology, and the financing of health care. He co-directs the UCLA Research Program in Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy.

School of Medicine

William Cunningham, M.D., M.P.H., is Professor of Medicine and Health Services at UCLA. His research interests include access to medical care, disparities, and health outcomes. He has focused much of his research on persons with HIV/AIDS, examining such topics as improving care through case management and the impact of race and gender on prevention activities.

Jose Escarce, Ph.D., M.D., is Professor of Medicine at UCLA. His research interests include health economics, managed care, physician behavior, racial and ethnic disparities in medical care, and technological change in medicine. Dr. Escarce has studied racial differences in the utilization of surgical procedures and diagnostic tests by elderly Medicare beneficiaries, and was lead investigator of a study of racial differences in medical care utilization among older persons.

Lillian Gelberg, M.D., is Professor in the UCLA Division of Family Medicine. Her major research interest centers around health status and access to care for vulnerable populations. She is currently conducting a number of studies on homeless people.

David Hayes-Bautista, Ph.D. is currently Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the School of Medicine, at UCLA. He completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in Medical Sociology at the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco. Dr. Bautista’s research focuses on the dynamics and processes of the health of the Latino population using both quantitative data sets and qualitative observations.

Department of Sociology

Oscar Grusky, Ph.D., Professor, is Director of the Mental Health Evaluation Research Program. Dr. Grusky's major research interests include organizational social psychology, mental illness, coalitions, and interorganizational behavior. He is also interested in the assessment of health systems for the seriously mentally ill and persons with HIV/AIDS.

Department of Epidemiology

Roger Detels, Ph.D., is Professor of Epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health, and is former Dean of the School. Since 1984, he has been the principal investigator of the Los Angeles Center of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, one of the largest natural history studies of HIV/AIDS in the world. For the past two decades, he has been the program director of the National Institutes of Health UCLA/Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program, which has trained over 100 health professionals from developing countries in epidemiology and HIV/AIDS.

Department of Economics

Janet Currie, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics at UCLA. A labor and health economist, her research focuses on the effects of public programs on poor children. In particular, she has studied the Head Start program (an enriched preschool for poor children), and Medicaid (health insurance for low income women and children).

RAND Health Sciences Program

Robert Brook, M.D., is Director of RAND Health Sciences Program, Professor of Medicine & Public Health, and Director of Clinical Scholars Program. His teaching and research activities are in measurement and assurance of quality medical care. He served as Medical Officer for the USPHS, Bureau of Health Services Research prior to joining UCLA in 1974. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, and the American Society of Clinical Investigation.

Paul Shekelle, Ph.D., M.D., is Professor of Medicine at UCLA with appointments at RAND and the Veterans Administration. An expert on meta-analysis, his research focus has been in the application of innovative methods to the assessment and improvement of the quality of care. He co-directs the Assessing Care of the Vulnerable Elderly project, which seeks to develop a comprehensive set of quality tools to assess care for this population.

Associate Faculty

Department of Health Services:

Emily Abel, Ph.D., Professor
Roshan Bastani, Ph.D., Professor
Lester Breslow, M.D., Professor Emeritus
E. Richard Brown, Ph.D., Professor
William Comanor, Ph.D., Professor of Economics (U.C. Santa Barbara)
Jonathan Fielding, M.D., MPH, Professor
Patricia Ganz, M.D., Professor
Fred Hagigi, DrPH, Associate Professor
Diana Hilberman, DrPH, Associate Professor
Moira Inkelas, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Robert M. Kaplan, Ph.D., Professor and Chair
Miriam Laugesen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Jeff Luck, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Marvin Marcus, D.D.S., Professor of Dentistry & Public Health
Vickie Mays, Ph.D., Professor
Patricia Parkerton, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Ninez Ponce, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Mark Schuster, M.D., Associate Professor
Paul Torrens, Ph.D., Professor
Antronette Yancey, M.D., Associate Professor

Department of Sociology:
Robert Emerson, Ph.D., Professor
Edward Telles, Ph.D., Professor
Roger Waldinger, Ph.D., Professor and Chair

Department of Epidemiology:
Ralph Frerichs, DVM, DrPH, Professor

School of Medicine
Susan Ettner, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Ronald Hays, Ph.D., Professor
Mark Litwin, M.D., Professor
Martin Shapiro, M.D., Professor

RAND Health Sciences Program
Audrey Burnam, Senior Behavioral Scientist
Rebecca Collins, Ph.D., Senior Behavioral Scientist
Susan W. Hosek, Group Manager, Economist, & Statistician
Katherine Kahn, M.D., Senior Natural Scientist
Emmett Keeler, Ph.D., Mathematician
Paul Koegel, Ph.D., Associate Director
Lisa Meredith, Senior Behavioral Scientist
Sally Morton, Ph.D., RAND Chair in Statistics
Rosalie Liccardo Pacula,Ph.D., Economist
Robert Reville, Ph.D., Director, Institute of Civil Justice
Roland Storm, Ph.D., Senior Economist

Training Environment

UCLA contains one college and 13 professional schools; approximately 39,000 students are enrolled in the University. In a recent survey, the American Research University Conference Board of Associated Research Councils ranked the quality of UCLA faculty second among public institutions and among the highest overall in the nation. The University has an ethnically and culturally diverse student body -- ethnic minorities comprise one-half of the undergraduate and 30 percent of the graduate student population.

The Department of Health Services in the School of Public Health is located in the UCLA Center for Health Sciences (CHS), which also includes the Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, and Nursing; the UCLA Medical Center; and a network of research institutes including the Jonsson Cancer Center and the Neuropsychiatric Institute. Since it opened in 1954, CHS has grown into one of the largest health sciences centers in the country, serving more than a quarter of a million people every year. Ties between the School of Public Health and other units of CHS are strengthened by joint faculty appointments with Medicine and Dentistry, and collaborative teaching and research activities.

The RAND Corporation was chartered in 1948, as a nonprofit institution to "further and promote scientific, educational and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare and security of the United States of America." To meet these objectives, RAND conducts rigorous analyses of significant national problems to provide decision makers and the public with a better understanding of the policy issues involved. All of its research is nonproprietary. Through The Rand Graduate School of Policy Studies, RAND also offers a graduate education program leading to a doctoral degree in policy analysis. It currently employs over 1600 professional and support personnel. Its research, dissemination, and education activities are supported by federal, state and local governments; foundations and other private, philanthropic sources; and corporate funds derived from endowment income and fees earned.

The Los Angeles area is the second largest, and arguably most diverse urban area in the country. It includes some of our richest and poorest people, many recent immigrants as well as long- term residents; large numbers of African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians; while non-Hispanic whites are a minority. UCLA and RAND maintain and seek to expand ties with the public and private sectors of this enterprise and the communities it serves. We do this to provide public service but, more importantly in a research context, to provide rewarding health services research opportunities for our faculty and graduate students.

Applications

All prospective fellows must submit an application to the UCLA/RAND Health Services Research Training Program. Those fellows pursuing a degree (including all doctoral applicants as well as those post-doctoral applicants who wish to purse a degree) must also submit separate applications to the UCLA graduate division and the Ph.D. program in Health Services, Economics, Epidemiology, or Sociology.

Online Applications

For additional information, please contact:

Roxy Naranjo,  Student Affairs Officer
Department of Health Services
UCLA School of Public Health
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1772

rnaranjo@ph.ucla.edu
310-825-7863 (tel)
310-825-3317 (fax)