Melinda J.B. Buntin, PhD is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Economics in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Bloomberg School of Public Health and in the Carey Business School. She joins Hopkins from Vanderbilt University, where she was University Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Health Policy; Leadership, Policy and Organization; and Medicine, Health, & Society and where she held the Mike Curb Chair for Health Policy as Chair of the Department of Health Policy, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. Buntin trained in health policy with a concentration in economics at Harvard University where she received her Ph.D. in 2000. She started her professional career at RAND Health and transitioned into several health policy leadership roles during her 12 years in Washington, D.C. She was the Director of the Office of Economic Analysis, Evaluation and Modeling at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and was Deputy Director of Health, Retirement and Long-Term Analysis at the Congressional Budget Office. In 2013, she became the founding Chair of the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University, a multidisciplinary department within a medical school. During her tenure she grew the faculty from 9 to 22 and started a Health Policy track in the MPH program and a Ph.D. Program in Health Policy. Under her leadership and vision, it has become one of the leading departments of its kind. 

Theodore “Jack” Iwashyna is a critical care physician and health services researcher whose research seeks to understand the context of critical illness, both how critical illness influences a patient’s life course, and how the organizational environment influences the effectiveness of the care that a patient receives. He aims to improve long-term health outcomes and quality of life for survivors of critical illness through social and health safety net integration. Iwashyna’s innovative research has provided evidence of the long-term impact of severe acute infections in the United States, showing that patients who survive sepsis often have enduring cognitive and functional deficits that last for years and result in difficulties completing basic activities in daily living, and that survivors are at higher risk for re-admission to the hospital and death. Iwashyna has worked with an international coalition to reframe advice on inpatient treatment of sepsis to incorporate explicit discussions of supporting family members and including neighborhood context and financial resources as key components in recovery. He currently is working on identifying modifiable social and contextual factors that shape functional recovery after serious illness, and investigating the roles of employment, financial toxicity, and caregiver burden as both outcomes of and contributors to recovery. Iwashyna joined Johns Hopkins University as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in 2022 from the University of Michigan.

Daniel Polsky is the 40th Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Health Economics at Johns Hopkins University. He holds joint appointments in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Carey Business School.  From 1996-2016 he was on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the Robert D. Eilers Professor the Wharton School and the Perelman School of Medicine.  From 2012-2019 he served as executive director of the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics. Dr. Polsky, a national leader in the field of health policy and economics, has dedicated his career to exploring how health care is organized, managed, financed, and delivered, especially for low-income people. His own research has advanced our understanding of the cost and quality tradeoff of interventions whether they are changes to large federal programs or local programs.  His most recent work focuses on how to provide access to quality health care in low-resource settings with a particular interest in narrow provider networks.