Karen Davis

After serving two decades as president of The Commonwealth Fund, KAREN DAVIS has returned to the John Hopkins community, where she previously chaired the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. On January 1, 2013, she was named the Eugene and Mildred Lipitz Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and director of the Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care. Davis is a national leader in health policy and is frequently called on to provide guidance to individual members of Congress and the Administration on issues related to health care spending, delivery systems for the uninsured and the chronically ill, the Medicare program, and the impact of a high-performing health care system.

A native of Oklahoma, she received her PhD in economics from Rice University, which recognized her achievements with a Distinguished Alumna Award in 1991. Davis is the recipient of the 2000 Baxter-Allegiance Foundation Prize for Health Services Research. In the spring of 2001, she received an honorary doctorate in humane letters from John Hopkins University. In 2006, she was selected for the AcademyHealth Distinguished Investigator Award for significant and lasting contributions to the field of health services research in addition to the Picker Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Patient Centered Care.

Davis has published a number of significant books, monographs, and articles on health and social policy issues, including the landmark books Health Care Cost Containment, Medicare Policy, National Health Insurance: Benefits, Costs, and Consequences, and Health and the War on Poverty.