Kenneth E. Thorpe

Kenneth E. Thorpe, PhD, is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor in the Department of Health Policy & Management. He is one of 11 current university-wide scholar-chairs at Emory made by presidential appointment. He was chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management for 22 years and oversaw the introduction of the MSPH program as well as the creation of the current PhD program in Health Services Research and Health Policy. He was the Vanselow Professor of Health Policy and Director, Institute for Health Services Research at Tulane University. He was previously professor of Health Policy and Administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; an associate professor and director of the Program on Health Care Financing and Insurance at the Harvard University School of Public Health and assistant professor of Public Policy and Public Health at Columbia University. Thorpe has also held visiting faculty positions at Pepperdine University and Duke University. He was deputy assistant secretary for Health Policy in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1993 to 1995. In this capacity, he coordinated all financial estimates and program impacts of President Clinton’s health care reform proposals for the White House. In the White House, he also directed the administration’s estimation efforts in dealing with Congressional health care reform proposals during the 103rd and 104th sessions of Congress.