Mark A. Peterson, Ph.D

Mark A. Peterson, Ph.D. (Political Science, University of Michigan) is Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, Health Policy & Management, and Law, and three-time Chair of the Department of Public Policy, in the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin School of Public Affairs. His previous faculty appointments were in the Department of Government at Harvard University (including as the Henry LaBarre Jayne Associate Professor), followed by the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, Department of Political Science, and Department of Health Services Administration (Graduate School of Public Health) at the University of Pittsburgh.  He is a specialist on American national institutions and the policy process, with specific attention to health care policy and health care reform.  He also studies the factors that shape the influence of research evidence in policy decision making.  Professor Peterson was a founding team member of the Blue Sky Health Initiative to transform the U.S. health and health care system.  As an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, he was a Legislative Assistant for Health Policy for U.S. Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD).  He currently is on the Faculty Task Force for the California Health Benefits Review Program (CHBRP).  For nine years he was editor of the multidisciplinary Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.  He has chaired the National Advisory Committees for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Scholars in Health Policy Research program and its Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) program, and served on the RWJF NACs of the Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program and the Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico.  He is a past President of the American Political Science Association’s Organized Section on Public Policy and a founding member of the Organized Section on Health Politics and Policy.  For a decade he served on the University of California Academic Senate’s Health Care Task Force, which he chaired in 2019-2020.  A Senior Fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, he is also a Faculty Associate at the Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities; in the Policy Impact Core of the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention and Treatment Services (CHIPTS); and is on the Internal Advisory Board for the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI).  Among other honors he is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, and selected for the Career Achievement Award of the Health Politics and Policy Section of the American Political Science Association.