Karen Davis

Dr. Karen Davis is the Eugene and Mildred Lipitz Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Director of The Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care. Formerly, she was the President of the Commonwealth Fund. Dr. Davis is a nationally recognized economist with a distinguished career in academia, public policy and research. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Education/Health in the Department of Health and Human Services, and as Administrator of the Health Resources Administration was the first woman to head a U.S. public health service agency. Prior to her government career, Ms. Davis was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., a visiting lecturer at Harvard University, and an assistant professor of economics at Rice University. A native of Oklahoma, she received her Ph.D. in economics from Rice University, which recognized her achievements with a Distinguished Alumna Award in 1991. Ms. Davis is the recipient of the 2000 Baxter-Allegiance Foundation Prize for Health Services Research. In the spring of 2001, Ms. Davis 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. She has published a number of books and articles on health and social policy issues, particularly rising health care costs and the need to transform health care in the U.S.