Wesley Yin

Wesley “Wes” Yin is a Professor of Economics at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and the Anderson School of Management. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Faculty Affiliate at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT. He is currently on leave during the 2023-2024 year, serving as Chief Economist of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Yin’s research focuses on health care, consumer finance, and economic inequality. His recent work studies competition and market power in health care, and the links between health care financing and consumer financial health and well-being.

His work has been published in leading economics and policy outlets such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, JAMA, Health Affairs, and the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, and has been featured in or he has written for media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Vox, and others.

From 2012 to 2014, Yin served in the Obama Administration as Acting Chief Economist and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomic Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and in the White House Council of Economic Advisers, advancing policing on health care quality, insurance affordability, higher education finance, and housing market stability. Since 2014, Yin has advised the state of California on health care reforms, including the design of state subsidies for marketplace insurance.

Previously, he was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and Boston University, and a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy at Harvard University. He received his PhD in economics from Princeton University.

 

Selected Publications  

The Impact of Financial Assistance Programs on Health Care Utilization. 2022. (with Alyce Adams, Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Jinglin Wang, and Francis Wong). Forthcoming at American Economic Review: Insights.

Personalized Telephone Outreach Increased Health Insurance Take-Up for Hard-to Reach Populations. 2022. (w/ Rebecca Myerson, Nicholas Tilipman, Andrew Fehrer, Honglin Li, and Isaac Menashe) Health Affairs 41(1): 129–137.

Medical Debt in the United States, 2009-2020. 2021. (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong) Journal of the American Medical Association 326(3). Media Coverage: NY Times, Washington Post, Vox, Marketwatch, CBS Evening News, Marketplace. JAMA editorial.

The Role of Behavioral Frictions in Health Insurance Marketplace Enrollment and Risk: Evidence from a Field Experiment. 2021. (with Richard Domurat and Isaac Menashe) American Economic Review 111(5): 1549–1574. [Online Appendix] Media Coverage: Tradeoffs Podcast

The Market for High-Quality Medicine: Retail Chain Entry and Drug Quality in India. 2019. (with Daniel Bennett) Review of Economics and Statistics 101(1) p.76-90 [Appendix]

Insurers’ Negotiating Leverage and the External Effect of Medicare Part D. 2015. (with Darius Lakdawalla), Review of Economics and Statistics 97:2 p.314-331 (an earlier version appears as NBER working paper no. 16251). Media coverage: New Yorker

R&D Policy, Agency Costs and Innovation in Personalized Medicine. 2009. Journal of Health Economics 28(5): 950-962.

Market Incentives and Pharmaceutical Innovation. 2008. Journal of Health Economics 27(4):1060-1077.

Female Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines. 2010. (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan) World Development 38(3): 333-344.

The Effect of the Medicare Part D Prescription Benefit on Drug Utilization and Expenditures (with Anirban Basu, James Zhang, Atonu Rabbani, David Meltzer, Caleb Alexander) Lead article at Annals of Internal Medicine 148(3): 169-177. Annals’ Summary for Patients.

Designing Targeting Schemes with Poverty Maps: Does Disaggregation Help?. 2007. (with Berk Özler, Chris Elbers, Tomoki Fujii, Peter Lanjouw) Journal of Development Economics 83(1).

Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines. 2006. (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan) Quarterly Journal of Economics 121(2). Winner of TIAA-CREF 2006 Certificate of Excellence.

Deposit Collectors (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan). 2006. Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy 6(2), Article 5.

 

Working Papers

Provider Market Power and Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets (with Nicholas Tilipman)

The Burden of Medical Debt and the Impact of Debt Forgiveness (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong). J-PAL Summary. AEA Pre-registration 1 (Old Debt). AEA Pre-registration 2 (Young Debt).

Trends in Medical Debt During the COVID Pandemic (with Raymond Kluender, Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Neale Mahoney, Francis Wong, and Xuyang Xia)

 

Other Publications and Policy Articles  

Trends in Medical Debt During the COVID-19 Pandemic” (with Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Raymond Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Francis Wong, and Xuyang Xia) JAMA Health Forum. 2022, 3(5), 2022.

Options To Improve Affordability In California’s Individual Health Insurance Market,” (with Peter Lee, Katie Ravel and Nicholas Tilipman), a Covered California report for Gov. Newsom, California State Senate and State Assembly pursuant to AB1810, February, 2019

How retail drug markets in poor countries develop” (with Dan Bennett) VoxDev.org, August, 13th, 2018.

Potential Impacts of Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson on Californians and the Individual Health Insurance Market” (with John Bertko) Covered California Report, September 25, 2017

Evaluating the Potential Consequences of Terminating Direct Federal Cost-Sharing Reduction (CSR) Funding” (with Richard Domurat) Covered California Report, January 26, 2017  [Appendix]

Trump’s “populist” economic proposals come with massive catches. Here’s what to watch for.” Vox, November 18, 2016

Strengthening Risk Protection through Private Long-Term Care Insurance. Brookings Institution, Hamilton Project Discussion Paper 2015-06, June 2015. Policy Brief.

Value of Survival Gains in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (with John Penrod, J. Ross Maclean, Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas Philipson) American Journal of Managed Care 2012 Nov;18(11 Suppl):S257-64

The impact of Medicare Part D on Medicare-Medicaid Dual-eligible Beneficiaries’ Prescription Utilization and Expenditures (with Caleb Alexander and Anirban Basu), Health Services Research, February 2010, 45(1), pp. 133-151   

Valuing health technologies at NICE: Recommendations for Improved Incorporation of Treatment Value in HTA (with Dana Goldman, Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas Philipson) Health Economics October 2010, 10(11) pp. 1109-1116

Solutions and Challenges to Curing Global Health Inequality Innovations 2(4), October 2007, 2(4), pp. 72-80

Testing Savings Product Innovations Using an Experimental Methodology (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan), Asian Development Bank, Economics and Research Department Technical Paper No. 8. November, 2003

A Review of Commitment Savings Products in Developing Countries (with Nava Ashraf, Nathalie Gons, Dean Karlan) ERD Working Paper, July 2003.

 

Current Teaching

Public Finance and the Economics of Inequality (Econ 415)

Health Care Finance and Management (MBA and MPP elective) (MGMT298 & PP290)

Econometrics for Policy Analysis (MPP Core) (PP208)

Applied Policy Project (APP) Capstone Advisor (PP298A-D)

Zev Yaroslavsky

During a career in public life spanning nearly four decades, Zev Yaroslavsky has been at the forefront of Los Angeles County’s biggest issues, including transportation, the environment, health care, and cultural arts.  He has been a pioneering advocate for the region’s homeless population and has played a key role in efforts to reform the county’s law enforcement agencies.

Mr. Yaroslavsky was first elected to office in 1975, stunning the political establishment by winning the Los Angeles City Council’s coveted 5th District seat at the age of 26.  He honed his fiscal skills as chairman of the Council’s Finance Committee and earned a reputation for being unafraid to tackle controversial issues, including the Los Angeles Police Department’s use of excessive force and its improper spying on law-abiding residents.  He authored two landmark ballot initiatives, one which cut in half the size of new commercial developments near residential neighborhoods in the City of L.A., and the other which banned oil drilling along the city’s coastline.

In describing Mr. Yaroslavsky’s City Hall tenure, the Los Angeles Times wrote that he “was more often than not a dominant player in virtually every municipal initiative of note since he joined the City Council.”

In 1994, Mr. Yaroslavsky was elected to the five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, representing the western part of the county and a constituency of two million people.  He served five terms as the Board’s Third District representative.  Because of term limits, he retired from office on December 1, 2014.  Supervisor Yaroslavsky’s award-winning website, which ran from late 2009 until the end of his term, including blog entries and feature stories on County issues, programs and personalities, can be accessed here.

As a member of the Board of Supervisors, Mr. Yaroslavsky quickly emerged as a leader on fiscal, health care, transportation, cultural and environmental matters.  He authored several landmark ballot initiatives:  the 1996 park bond, which resulted in the preservation of a broad swath of rural open space and the development of urban parks throughout the county, and the 2002 trauma tax, approved by more than 73% of county voters—a measure credited with saving two public hospitals from closure and keeping the county’s emergency services intact.

Mr. Yaroslavsky was the driving force behind several major transit projects, including the hugely successful Orange Line busway across the San Fernando Valley, the Exposition Light Rail line from downtown to Santa Monica which will be completed at the end of 2015, and the subway—Purple Line—extension from Western Ave. to West Los Angeles which broke ground in 2014.

After the closure of Martin Luther King, Jr. hospital in south Los Angeles, Mr. Yaroslavsky proposed a partnership between the University of California and Los Angeles County upon which the recently re-opened hospital was modeled.  Mr. Yaroslavsky also launched the building of three innovative school-based health clinics in largely working-class neighborhoods where many residents are living below the poverty line and rarely seek medical attention.  He also led the effort to provide permanent supportive housing for thousands of homeless persons who’ve been identified as most likely to die if they remained on county streets.

During his public service career, Mr. Yaroslavsky was the county’s leader in the cultural arts.  The Los Angeles Times said of him before he retired, “It would be hard to find another major politician anywhere in the entire country with Yaroslavsky’s record for outright arts support and achievement.” He championed efforts to rebuild and modernize the world famous Hollywood Bowl amphitheater and was instrumental in the development of architect Frank Gehry’s iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall, home of the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra.  He has also funded major investments in the County Museum of Art, the Museum of Natural History and the San Fernando Valley Performing Arts Center.

Mr. Yaroslavsky is also credited with playing a leading role in the sweeping reforms of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.  He is responsible for the creation of the Citizen’s Commission on Jail Violence in 2011 which recommended dozens of measures to restore constitutional policing and integrity to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and its jails.

Apart from his responsibilities as an elected official, Mr. Yaroslavsky has long been associated with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a non-governmental organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., that promotes the development of democratic institutions in burgeoning democracies.  He has monitored five elections for NDI:  Romania (1990), Mexico (2000), Ukraine (2004), and Nigeria (2011 & 2015).  He has conducted seminars on local government finance and democratic institution-building in Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Bosnia/Herzegovina.

Mr. Yaroslavsky is now the Director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and the Department of History, focusing on the intersection of policy, politics and history of the Los Angeles region.

Mr. Yaroslavsky was born and raised in Los Angeles and earned an M.A. in British Imperial History and a B.A. in Economics and History, both from UCLA.  He is a graduate of Fairfax High School in Los Angeles.

Mark A. Peterson

A specialist on American national institutions, much of Professor Peterson’s scholarship focuses on the Presidency, Congress, interest groups, and public opinion, evaluating interactions among them, and their implications for policy making, both within the general domain of domestic policy and with special attention to national health care policy, Medicare reform, and HIV/AIDS politics and policy.  He also studies the role of evidence in policy making, including the contextual factors that promote or inhibit its influence.

He has written extensively on how Congress responds to presidential legislative initiatives, exploring how different political, economic, and institutional settings affect coalition building, promote inter-institutional conflict or cooperation, influence the president’s legislative performance, and establish the baseline for assessing the performance of individual leaders (including Legislating Together: The White House and Capital Hill from Eisenhower to Reagan, Harvard University Press). He has also investigated the ways in which presidents use relationships with organized interests to promote their administration’s political or programmatic agendas, based on the presidential objectives and strategic calculations.

As a participant in the Annenberg Institutions of American Democracy Project, with Public Policy Department colleague Joel Aberbach he co-chaired the Commission on the Executive Branch and co-edited the volume it produced on the politics and performance of the presidency and bureaucracy (Institutions of American Democracy: The Executive Branch, Oxford University Press), which won the Richard E. Neustadt Award from the Presidential Research section of the American Political Science Association.  He also contributed to its study of public and elite opinion on the performance of American institutions (Institutions of American Democracy: A Republic Divided, Oxford University Press).

In addition, specific to the domain of health and health care policy, he edited Healthy Markets?  The New Competition in Medical Care, Duke University Press; and co-edited both Uncertain Times:  Kenneth Arrow and the Changing Economics of Health Care, Duke University Press) and the four-volume edited series Health Politics and Policy (Sage), as well as edited the special health policy journal issues, The Managed Care Backlash and Who Shall Lead?

Much of his most recent scholarship has linked these themes and extensive original research to produce a book manuscript entitled “American Sisyphus: Health Care and the Challenge of Transformative Policymaking.” Encompassing the last 100 years, it examines how recognized problems in the health care system, the influence of public opinion, transformation of the interest group community, institutional dynamics in Congress, changes in the context and demands of political leadership, various dimensions of social learning by policy makers, and strategic and tactical choices by presidents both thwarted health care reform in the past and ultimately made possible the enactment of President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, but in a context that also primed the challenge of the law before the U.S. Supreme Court and prompted enduring partisan attacks on its implementation and continuation.

Professor Peterson was a founding team member of the UCLA-based multidisciplinary Blue Sky Health Initiative to transform the U.S. health and health care system, which helped advise Congress on the inclusion of disease prevention and health promotion strategies in the Affordable Care Act.  Previously, as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, he served as a Legislative Assistant for Health Policy in the Office of U.S. Senator Tom Daschle.  During 2000-2003 he was on the Study Panel on Medicare and Markets organized by the National Academy of Social Insurance.

From 1993 to 2002, Professor Peterson was the editor of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, a leading bimonthly scholarly journal in the field. He later chaired the journal’s Executive Committee, on which he remains a member, and also served on the Board of Editors of PS: Political Science & Politics and the Board of Editors of the Journal of Politics.  He has often been interviewed for television, radio, and print media stories, including for CBS News, National Public Radio and state public radio networks, CNN Money.Com, local television in Boston and Los Angeles, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, San Diego Union Tribune, Arizona Republic, Milwaukee Journal SentinelAtlanta Constitution, U.S. News & World Report, CQ Weekly, The Hill, American Medical News, Internal Medicine News, The Lancet Oncology, and newspapers and broadcast news in Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

Professor Peterson has been an elected member of the Council of the American Political Science Association (2008-2010) and a member of its Administrative Committee, a founding member of the Association’s Organized Section on Health Politics and Policy, and was elected President of its Organized Section on Public Policy.  He has served on various committees for the American Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association, the Western Political Science Association, and AcademyHealth.  He chaired the National Advisory Committees for both the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Scholars in Health Policy Research program and its Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) program, and was a member of the National Advisory Committees for the Foundation’s  Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program and Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico.  He is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.  Other honors include the Pi Sigma Alpha Award from the Midwest Political Science Association, the E. E. Schattschneider Award from the American Political Science Association, the Richard E. Neustadt Award from the President and Executive Politics Section of the APSA, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.

At UCLA, he is Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law, and has twice been the Chair of the Department of Public Policy.  He is a Faculty Associate of the Center for Health Policy Research, the Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities, and the Institute for Society & Genetics; member of the Policy Impact Core for the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services; and is on the Internal Advisory Board for the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at UCLA.  He previously served on the faculty boards of the Center for Policy Research on Aging, the Institute for Social Research, and the Center for American Politics and Public Policy.  He is also currently a member of the University of California’s Academic Senate Health Care Task Force and the Academic Advisory Committee for the University of California Washington Center (UC in DC), and was on the University of California Office of the President’s Health Benefits Working Group.

Prior to coming to UCLA, he was Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, and Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, and Henry La Barre Jayne Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University.

 

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

American Sisyphus: Health Care and the Challenge of Transformative Policymaking.
Mark A. Peterson.  Book manuscript in progress.

Reversing Course on Obamacare:  Why Not Another Medicare Catastrophic? 
Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 43(4) (August 2018): 605-650.

In the Shadow of Politics: The Pathways of Research Evidence to Health Policy Making. 
Special Issue on Policy Analysis and the Politics of Health Policy.   Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 43(3) (June 2018): 341-376.

The Third Rail of Politics The Rise and Fall of Medicare’s Untouchability
Mark A. Peterson.  In Alan Cohen, David Colby, Keith Wailoo, and Julian Zelizer, Medicare and Medicaid at Fifty.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Interest Groups and the Executive Branch
Mark A. Peterson.  In Burdett A. Loomis, ed., Guide to Interest Groups and Lobbying in the United States.  Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2011.

Who Wants Presidential Supremacy? Findings from the Institutions of American Democracy Project
Joel D. Aberbach, Mark A. Peterson, and Paul J. Quirk.  Presidential Studies Quarterly 37 (September 2007): 515-53.

It Was a Different Time: Obama and the Unique Opportunity for Health Care Reform
Mark A. Peterson.  Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 36(3) (June 2011): 429-436.

The Ideological and Partisan Polarization of Health Care Reform and Tax Policy
Mark A. Peterson.  Tax Law Review 65(4), 2012: 627-667.

Institutions of American Democracy: A Republic Divided
Annenberg Democracy Project.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Health Politics and Policy, Four-Volume Set
Sue Tolleson-Rinehart and Mark A. Peterson, Editors.
Volume 1.  Defining Health Systems: Path Dependence and Policy Emergence
Volume 2. Tensions in Health Policy: Ethics, Interests, and the Public
Volume 3. Health Systems in Comparative Perspective
Volume 4. The Contemporary Politics of Health System Reform
London: Sage Publications, 2010.

Legislating Together: The White House and Capitol Hill from Eisenhower to Reagan
Mark A. Peterson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.

 

Fernando Torres-Gil

Fernando M. Torres-Gil’s multifaceted career spans the academic, professional, and policy arenas.  He is a Professor of Social Welfare and Public Policy at UCLA, an Adjunct Professor of Gerontology at USC, and Director of the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging.  He has served as Associate Dean and Acting Dean at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, and most recently Chair of the Social Welfare Department.  He has written six books and over l00 publications, including The New Aging: Politics and Change in America (1992) and Lessons from Three Nations, Volumes I and II (2007).  His academic contributions have earned him membership in the prestigious Academies of Public Administration, Gerontology and Social Insurance.  His research spans important topics of health and long-term care, disability, entitlement reform, and the politics of aging.

Professor Torres-Gil is more than an academic.  He has an impressive portfolio of public service and national and international recognition as a leading spokesperson on demographics, aging, and public policy.  He earned his first presidential appointment in 1978 when President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the Federal Council on Aging.  He was selected as a White House Fellow and served under Joseph Califano, then Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), and continued as a Special Assistant to the subsequent Secretary of HEW, Patricia Harris.  He was appointed (with Senate Confirmation) by President Bill Clinton as the first-ever U.S. Assistant Secretary on Aging in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). As the Clinton Administration’s chief advocate on aging, Torres-Gil played a key role in promoting the importance of the issues of aging, long-term care and disability, community services for the elderly, and baby boomer preparation for retirement.  He served under HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, managing the Administration on Aging and organizing the 1995 White House Conference on Aging, in addition to serving as a member of the President’s Welfare Reform Working Group.

In 2010 he received his third presidential appointment (with Senate Confirmation) when President Barack Obama appointed him as Vice Chair of the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that reports to the Congress and White House on federal matters related to disability policy.  During his public service in Washington, D.C., he also served as Staff Director of the U.S. House Select Committee on Aging under his mentor, Congressman Edward R. Roybal.

At the local level, Torres-Gil has served as the Vice President of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission and a member of the Harbor and Taxi Commissions for the city of Los Angeles.  He currently serves Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as an appointed member of the Board of Airport Commissioners.  At the state level, he was appointed by former Governor Gray Davis to the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Veterans’ Homes and by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a delegate to the 2005 White House Conference on Aging.

He continues to provide important leadership in philanthropy and non-profit organizations as a board member of the AARP Foundation, and he is a former board member of The California Endowment, National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California and the Los Angeles Chinatown Service Center.

Dr. Torres-Gil was born and raised in Salinas, California, the son of migrant farm workers.  He earned his A.A. in Political Science at Hartnell Community College (1968), a B.A. with honors in Political Science from San Jose State University (1970), and an M.S.W. (1972) and Ph.D. (1976) in Social Policy, Planning and Research from the Heller Graduate School in Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

California, Where Brown and Gray America Collide
TIME magazine, June 24, 2015

Policy, Politics and Aging: Crossroads in the 1990s
Torres-Gil, F. (1998) in J.S. Steckenrider and T.M. Parrott (Eds.), New Directions in Old-Age Politics, Albany: State University of New York Press, 75-87

The New Aging: Politics and Change in America
Torres-Gil, F. The New Aging: Politics and Change in America. Westport, CT: Auburn House, 1992

The Emerging Nexus of Aging and Diversity: Implications for Public Policy and Entitlement Reform
Torres-Gil, F. and Bickson-Moga, K., Elder’s Advisor: The Journal of Elder Law and Post-Retirement Planning, Vol. 4, No. 1, Summer 2002

Social Policy and Aging
Torres-Gil, F. and Villa, V., in J. Midgley, M. Tracy and M. Livermore (Eds.), The Handbook of Social Policy, 2000, Sage Publications

The Art of Aging Well: Lessons From Three Nations
Carmel, S., C. Morse, and F. Torres-Gil (Eds.). Volume I. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., In Press

The Art of Caring for Older Adults
Carmel, S., C. Morse, and F. Torres-Gil (Eds.). Volume II. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., In Press

Neal Halfon

Dr. Halfon received an MD from the University of California, Davis, and a MPH from the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his pediatric residency at UC San Diego and UC San Francisco. Dr. Halfon was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at both UC San Francisco and Stanford.

He has published the results of research on immunizations for inner-city children, health care needs to children in foster care, trends in chronic illnesses for children, delivery of health care services for children with asthma, and investigations of new models of health service delivery for high-risk children. Dr. Halfon recently co-authored and co-edited Child Rearing in America: Challenges Facing Parents with Young Children with Kathryn Taaffe McLearn and Mark A. Shuster. In this volume Dr. Halfon and a team of experts analyze findings from recent nationwide surveys, offering new insights into parenting beliefs and practices that can help to bring about more family-responsive and holistic child health and developmental services. Dr. Halfon also led the team that developed and implemented the 2000 National Survey of Early Childhood Health, and supervised the analysis of that survey, and the resulting special supplement to the journal Pediatrics which will be published in the fall of 2003.

Dr. Halfon’s primary research interests include the provision of developmental service to young children, access to care for low-income children, and delivery of health services to children with special health care needs — with a particular interest in abused and neglected children who are in the foster care system. His recent work attempts to define a developmentally-focused model of health production across the life course, and to understand the implications of such an approach for the delivery and financing of health care. He is currently co-chair of the Health Services Working Group for the planned National Children’s Study, an effort being led by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr Halfon was appointed to the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine in 2001. He has also served on numerous expert panels and advisory committees including the 1999 Institute of Medicine committee commissioned by Surgeon General Satcher to propose the leading health indicators to measure the countries progress on our National Healthy Peoples agenda. He currently serves on a congressionally mandated Committee of the Institute of Medicine to evaluate how children’s health should be measured in the US.

Neal Halfon, MD, MPH is the Director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities, and also directs the Child and Family Health Program in the UCLA School of Public Health, and the federally funded Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s National Center for Infancy and Early Childhood Health Policy Research. Dr. Halfon is a Professor of Pediatrics in the UCLA School of Medicine and Professor of Community Health Sciences in the UCLA School of Public Health, and is Professor of Policy Studies in the School of Public Policy and Social Research and is a also consultant in the Health Program at RAND.

Thomas Rice

In addition to his appointment in Public Policy, Thomas Rice is Distinguised Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management.

Dr. Rice previously served as the UCLA campus as Vice Chancellor for Academic Personnel from 2006 to 2011 and as Interim Dean of Public Health in 2012. As Vice Chancellor he was responsible for overseeing the promotions, recruitment, and retention of faculty at the campus level. He also served as Chair of the Department of Health Services from 1996 to 2000 and 2003 to 2004.

Dr. Rice is a health economist, having received his doctorate in the Department of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1982. His areas of interest include health insurance, competition and regulation; physicians’ economic behavior; and Medicare. He was lead author of a book about the U.S. health care system, for the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, published in 2013. The fourth edition of his book, The Economics of Health Reconsidered, was published in 2015. He served as editor of the journal Medical Care Research and Review from 1994 to 2000.

Dr. Rice was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006. He was chair of the AcademyHealth Board of Directors in 2005-6, and previously he had been awarded its Article of the Year Award and its Young Investigator Award.