 Joy Melnikow, M. D., M. P. H.
Director
Professor
Department of Family & Community Medicine
(916) 734-3160
jamelnikow@ucdavis.edu
Joy Melnikow, MD, MPH is the Director of the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research and Professor of Family and
Community Medicine at the University of California, Davis. She serves on the executive committee
for the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, and was recently appointed to the US Preventive
Services Task Force. She received her MD from UC San Francisco and her MPH in epidemiology from UC Berkeley.
She completed her residency in Family Medicine at the University of Massachusetts, worked for the Indian Health Service,
and was on the faculty of MetroHealth Medical Center/Case Western University before coming to UC Davis in 1992.
Her research focuses on cancer prevention, women’s health, particularly in regard to decision making and patient preferences, comparative effectiveness, and cost effectiveness. With funding by private foundations, the American Cancer Society, the California Breast Cancer Research Program, and the National Cancer Institute, she has pursued research on effectiveness, preferences, decision making, and cost-effectiveness of preventive interventions related primarily to breast and cervical cancer.
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Rahman Azari, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Department of Statistics
(530) 752-7709
asazari@ucdavis.edu
Dr. Rahman Azari joined the Department of Statistics at UC Davis in 1985, and he has been a core faculty member of the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research since its inception. He has actively been involved in more than thirty research projects with the UC Davis Medical School funded by NIH, NIMH, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, California Department of Health Services and other federal and state agencies. He has published in many reputed scientific journals including Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of Royal Statistical Society, Journal of Applied Statistics, Journal of Epidemiology, Medical Care, Journal of Family Practice, Journal of General Internal Medicine, and Journal of American Geriatric Society. He has contributed to research in different areas of health care including physician patient interaction and health outcomes, patient expectations, medical decision analysis, cost-effectiveness of health services, palliative care, and health services for minority populations.
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Klea D. Bertakis, M.D., M.P.H.
Professor and Chair
Department of Family and Community Medicine
(916) 734-3167
kdbertakis@ucdavis.edu
Dr. Bertakis was born and raised in Northern
California and received her B.S. degree from UC Davis and M.P.H. from UC Berkeley.
She attended medical school and completed her family practice residency at the University of Utah. She joined the UC Davis faculty in 1980 and in 1994
founded the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research, then known as the Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care. She became Chair of the
Department of Family and Community Medicine in 1995 and was elected Chair of the Council of Chairs in 2000. In 2007, she once again became Director of the
Center for Healthcare Policy and Research, a post that she held for another two years.
Dr. Bertakis' research focuses on doctor-patient interaction and the effects of physician practice style on patient outcomes and health care delivery.
She was the youngest recipient of the Curtis G. Hames Research Award in Family Medicine, which is a lifetime achievement award for contributions to family
medicine research. She has sat on numerous editorial boards and is currently a member of the British Medical Journal USA. Dr. Bertakis has also
served on the National Board of Medical Examiners and Medical Board of California. |
Adela de la Torre, Ph.D.
Professor and Director
Department of Chicana/o Studies
(530) 752-3904
adelatorre@ucdavis.edu
Adela de la Torre, an agricultural economist, is the director and Professor of Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Davis. Dr. de la Torre's publications and research primarily focus on health care access and finance issues that affect the Latino community as well as Border health issues. In addition, she has completed studies on the impact of education on occupational location of Hispanics.
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Peter Franks, M.D., M.S.Ed.
Professor
Department of Family and Community Medicine
(916) 734-5494
pfranks@ucdavis.edu
Dr. Franks' research interests include research design & methodology in primary care; psychosocial and socioeconomic factors in health; health status measurement
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Donald M. Hilty, M.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
(916) 734-8110
dmhilty@ucdavis.edu
Dr. Hilty helped launch psychiatry telecommunication services through the UC Davis Telemedicine Program, allowing him to treat patients in remote areas. A contributing author to two psychiatry textbooks, Dr. Hilty is primarily interested in the diagnosis and management of mood disorders. He is a telemedicine consultant to the American Psychiatric Association and received the organization's Early Career Psychiatrist Award in 1996. He is investigating the use of pharmacological agents to treat bipolar disorders and conducting studies to assess outcomes for patients with depression and measure patient/provider satisfaction with telemedicine services.
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Anthony F. Jerant, M.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Family and Community Medicine
(916) 734-7081
anthony.jerant@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Dr. Jerant is an Associate Professor of Family Medicine. He received his medical degree from Saint Louis University and completed residency training at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar from 2000-2004. His research interests include developing and evaluating effective and resource-efficient methods of enhancing patient self-efficacy for health-related tasks; evaluating the influence of patient personality characteristics in health care and clinical research; and understanding and mitigating health disparities.
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Richard L. Kravitz, M.D., M.S.P.H.
Former CHPR Director,
Professor and Co-vice Chair, Research
Department of Internal Medicine
(916) 734-1248
rlkravitz@ucdavis.edu
Richard L. Kravitz, former Director of the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research, has research interests centering on the causes and consequences of physician behavior. As a participant in the landmark Medical Outcomes Study, he and his co-authors reported on the relationship between patient mix, utilization of health care services, physician specialty and system of care; their work received the 1993 Article-of-the-Year Award from the Association for Health Services Research.
In other projects he has examined the participation of physicians and nurses in strikes and work actions, the impact of the malpractice system on defensive medical practices, and the effect of managed care on health services utilization and quality. In more recent work, he has examined how clinical opinion leaders can be identified, how physicians respond to patients' requests for services, and how direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs influences physician decision making. A Fellow of the Association for Health services Research, Dr. Kravitz was appointed Director of the UC Davis Center for Healthcare Policy and Research in 1996 and served in that capacity until 2006; he also serves as Co-vice Chair for research in the Department of Internal Medicine.
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J. Paul Leigh, Ph.D.
Professor
Public Health Sciences
(530) 752-3239
pleigh@ucdavis.edu
J. Paul Leigh received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His fields of expertise are health and labor economics as well as econometrics. In recent years he has written papers on tobit regression, instrumental variables, and attrition bias that attempt to popularize econometric techniques for research physicians and epidemiologists. He has also written papers that estimate the costs of occupational injuries and illnesses as well as costs of hepatitis C. Additional research interests include workers compensation, arthritis, and effects of gasoline prices on highway fatalities.
"If it's not fun, it's not economics." |
Debora A. Paterniti, Ph.D.
Associate Adjunct Professor
Departments of Internal Medicine and Sociology
(916) 734-2367
dapaterniti@ucdavis.edu
Debora Paterniti is the Center's Authority on qualitative health services research. Her expertise in qualitative research methods has allowed her to scrutinize aspects of health services otherwise considered inaccessible. Her command of sociological research methodology has informed and broadened a great deal of the health services research undertaken at the Center. Until recently, she also served as Associate Director, and then Deputy Director, of the CHPR.
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John A. Robbins, M.D., M.S.H..
Professor of General Medicine
Department of Internal Medicine, Division of General Medicine
(916) 734-7005
jarobbins@ucdavis.edu
Dr. Robbins is board certified in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics. His interests are in clinical predictors and interventions and their effects on health and morbidity plus their related primary and secondary costs including clinical diseases, interventions, and societal costs.
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Patrick S. Romano, M.D., M.P.H.
Professor
Department of Internal Medicine
Department of Pediatrics
(916) 734-7237
psromano@ucdavis.edu
Dr. Romano is Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine. He is a graduate of Princeton University, Georgetown University School of Medicine, and the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He completed joint training in internal medicine and pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University Hospitals, followed by fellowship training in health services research and clinical epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco. His research interests include comparative evaluation of health care outcomes, the use of outcomes data to improve the quality and effectiveness of medical care, and the epidemiology of traumatic injuries and birth defects.
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