Deborah Freund is a full-time research professor in the School of Community & Global Health (SCGH). She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Population Health Science at The College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific and the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA. In the past, she has served as the RAND Corporation’s O’Neill-Alcoa Chair of Policy Analysis, the president of Claremont Graduate University, the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, and a Distinguished Professor of Public Administration and Economics at Syracuse University, and the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Dean of the Faculties, and Professor of Public Affairs, Economics, and Medicine at Indiana University. She served as executive director of the American Society of Health Economists from 2019 to 2020. Before she completed her PhD, she worked at The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
She began her academic career as an assistant and associate professor in the Health Policy and Administration departments at the Gillings School of Global Public Health and the Economics Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was one of the first scholars to study Medicaid and is known for her research and evaluation of Medicaid-managed care and the outcomes and costs of total knee replacement. She wrote the Australian guidelines on pharmacoeconomics—legislation that determines national drug prices through cost-effectiveness analysis and setting a reference price—a practice that has spread worldwide. She was on the team that designed the Medical Care Expenditures Panel Survey and was the team’s principal investigator that created the Fair Health Database.
Freund is the author of over 100 refereed articles and chapters, two books, and has been on the editorial board of 10 journals and publishers. Her current interests are in Medicaid managed care, health disparities, the impact of the Medicaid expansion under the ACA, how COVID-19 has impacted access to care and insurance coverage, and vaccine hesitancy. She has received numerous grants and contracts for her research, totaling over $50 million as principal investigator and another $50 million as a co-principal investigator or participant. Funding agencies have included CMS (formerly HCFA), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the New York State Health Foundation, AHRQ, NIH, NSF, and the states of Vermont and Ohio.
Freund has been a recipient of the Kershaw Prize, which is given to a scholar under the age of 40 by the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management; the J.S. Drotman Award from the American Public Health Association, which recognizes an individual younger than 30 who has creatively challenged public health; and the Board of Trustees Award from the American Hospital Association. In the past, Freund has consulted for members of Congress, the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine), Cerner, and several pharmaceutical companies.
Her current board service includes Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the San Antonio Regional Hospital, and the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine. Her previous board service included Cedars Sinai, The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), Excellus Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Med-America, AcademyHealth, and Tuition Plan. In the past, she also was a very active member of The American Public Health Association, where she chaired the medical care section. She has also served on many advisory boards, including the Duke University Evaluation Hub, the Catalyst for Health Reform, and the dean’s advisory board for the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She was chair of the American Hospital Association’s Board of Health Research and Education Trust and the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA). Freund was elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance in 2003.
She received a Master’s Degree in applied economics, a Master of public health degree in medical care administration, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.