Meet-the-Experts Student Breakfast

Elizabeth A. McGlynn, Ph.D.

Dr. McGlynn is associate director of RAND Health and holds the RAND Distinguished Chair in Health Care Quality. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND Health, a division of RAND, is the nation's largest independent health policy research program, with a broad research portfolio that focuses on health care quality assessment and improvement; health economics, organization and finance; health promotion and disease prevention; global health; and, public health preparedness. In her role as associate director, Dr. McGlynn is responsible for strategic development and oversight of the research portfolio and for external dissemination and communications of the findings of RAND Health research.

Dr. McGlynn is an internationally known expert on methods for evaluating the appropriateness and technical quality of health care delivery. She has conducted research on the appropriateness with which a variety of surgical and diagnostic procedures are used in the U.S. and in other countries. She led the development of a comprehensive method for evaluating the technical quality of care delivered to adults and children. The method was used in a national study of the quality of care delivered to U.S. adults and children. The article reporting the adult findings received the Article-of-the-Year award from AcademyHealth in 2004.

Dr. McGlynn is a member of the Institute of Medicine and serves on a variety of national advisory committees. She was a member of the Strategic Framework Board that provided a blueprint for the National Quality Forum on the development of a national quality measurement and reporting system.

She serves on the Committee on Performance Measurement for NCQA and on the Assessment and Quality Improvement Working Group for the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation. She is on the Board of the Little Company of Mary Hospital Service Area in Southern California. She serves on the editorial boards for Health Services Research and The Milbank Quarterly.

Dr. McGlynn received her B.A. in international political economy from Colorado College, her M.P.P. from the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and her Ph.D. in public policy from the Pardee RAND Graduate School.