Joy Melnikow, director of the UC Davis Center for Healthcare Policy and Research, has been appointed vice chair for public health of the California Health Benefits Review Program Task Force. A professor of family and community medicine, she has served as a task force member since 2008. The appointment was effective July1.
"I think this really is an honor for the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research because it acknowledges the quality of the work we have done for the task force in the past," Melnikow said. "I'm excited about the way in which this will further involve us in the application of research to health-policy formulation."
The 10-member task force includes physicians and public-health experts from five of the six University of California schools of medicine, Stanford University and Loma Linda University medical schools and the school of public health at UC Berkeley. It is charged with providing legislators with independent analysis of the medical, financial and public-health impacts of proposed health insurance benefit mandates and repeals.
Melnikow is a physician with a master's degree in public health whose research focuses on cancer prevention, women's health, particularly with regard to decision-making and patient preferences, comparative effectiveness and cost effectiveness. She also serves on the executive committee for the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center and is a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Members of Melnikow's public-health team include Dominique Ritley, Center for Healthcare Policy Research senior health policy analyst; UC Davis Professor of Public Health Sciences Stephen McCurdy and Diana Cassady, associate adjunct professor of public health sciences.
The Center for Healthcare Policy and Research (formerly called the Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care) conducts research on health-care access, delivery, costs, outcomes and related health policy to improve the organization, quality and effectiveness of the practice of medicine, especially primary care. The center is a resource for the university and health system on comparative effectiveness research. Center faculty conduct original research, offer consulting services to agencies in both public and private sectors, and provide research training to fellows, graduate students and junior faculty. Established as an interdisciplinary unit, the center includes more than 80 health-care researchers who represent disciplines ranging from business management and psychiatry to preventative medicine, epidemiology and statistics. For more information, visit www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/chpr.