Dana Goldman

Biography

Dana P. Goldman is University Professor of Public Policy, Pharmacy, and Economics at the University of Southern California and the Leonard D. Schaeffer Director of the USC Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy & Government Service. He has led the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics since its inception, establishing it as one of the world’s premier health economics organizations (ranked 3^rd globally among 2,700+ institutions). He previously served as Dean of the USC Price School of Public Policy from 2020 to 2024.

Dr. Goldman is the author of more than 350 articles and has been cited more than 23,000 times. He pioneered a “Netflix model” to improve access to treatment and the benefits of  lower copayments for the chronically ill. He serves (or has served) as a health policy advisor to the Congressional Budget Office, California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, Covered California, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute, and GRAIL. He has been awarded more than $50 million in research funding from NIH. His research is regularly featured in outlets like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Stat, The Economist, NBC Nightly News, PBS NewsHour, CNN, NPR, and other media.  

Dr. Goldman is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Social Insurance, and National Academy of Public Administration — three of his field’s highest honors. He is a past recipient of the USC Associates Award, Alice Hersh Emerging Leader Award, MetLife Silver Scholar Award, NIHCM Research Award, Robert Biller Award—among other distinctions. In 2024, USC appointed him a University Professor “for his decades of excellence as a policy leader and champion of interdisciplinary collaboration.”

Dr. Goldman is strongly committed to mentoring students and junior faculty. He was a founding director of USC’s Center for Minority Aging Research, funded by NIH, and he led it for 8 years. Past trainees include faculty at Stanford, Harvard, Duke, UCLA, UCSF, USC, Tufts, World Bank, University of Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt. He has received the USC Mellon Mentoring Award and several other teaching awards.

Dr. Goldman frequently engages with the private and non-profit sectors. He co-founded EntityRisk and Precision Health Economics, a consultancy sold in 2015. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Price Philanthropies and previously held the Distinguished Chair in Health Economics at RAND, where he directed the health economics program. He serves as a nonresident senior fellow at  The Brookings Institution, and research associate with the National Bureau for Economic Research. 

He graduated B.A. summa cum laude from Cornell University and earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.

Selected Publications

• Chapel, J. M., Tysinger, B., Goldman, D. P., Rowe, J. W. (2023). The Forgotten Middle: Worsening Health and Economic Trends Extend to Americans with Modest Resources Nearing Retirement. Health Affairs, 42(9), 1230–1240.
• Bruine de Bruin, W., Ulqinaku, A., & Goldman, D. P. (2022). Effect of COVID-19 vaccine allocation strategies on vaccination refusal: A national survey. Journal of Risk Research, 25, 1047-1054.
• Chaturvedi, R., Gracner, T., Tysinger, B., Narain, K., Goldman, D., & Sturm, R. (2022). The Long-term Value of Bariatric Surgery Interventions for American Adults With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Annals of Surgery, 42(9).