Elizabeth Mertz, PhD, MA, is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, with a joint appointment in the Department of Preventive and Restorative Dental Sciences, School of Dentistry and in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Nursing. She is affiliated with the UCSF Center to Address Disparities in Children’s Oral Health (CANDO), the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and Healthforce Center. Dr. Mertz’s research encompasses a broad range of health care workforce, health policy, and health services research topics such as supply and demand of providers, health professions regulation, state and federal workforce policy, access to care, oral health disparities, and evolving professional practice models. She holds a BA from the University of Southern California, a MA from the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and a PhD in medical sociology from the University of California, San Francisco.