Three UCLA faculty members elected to the National Academy of Medicine

A UCLA Fielding School of Public Health professor has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the academy announced today. The three faculty members join 97 other members from across the U.S. and the world elected this year.

One of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine, election to the academy recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service. New members are chosen by current members through a process that recognizes major contributions to the advancement of medical sciences, health care, and public health.

UCLA Fielding’s Dr. Susan Ettner, distinguished professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, has been honored for her foundational research on the link between socioeconomic status and health and her pioneering research in the field of behavioral health economics, Academy officials said. 

“I am truly honored to accept this tremendous recognition of my work establishing the deep connections between socioeconomic position and health and the critical role of policy in ensuring financial access to behavioral healthcare,” said Ettner, also a distinguished professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research in the Department of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and dean emerita of the Division of Graduate Education at UCLA. “As a first-generation college graduate and University of California alum whose research aspirations were realized only through the support of my undergraduate faculty mentor, it is especially meaningful to be recognized for my work while serving as a UC faculty member myself.”

The other UCLA honorees are physician-scientist Dr. Donald Kohn, a pioneer in gene therapies for children with life-threatening diseases; and cancer researcher Dr. Dennis Slamon, whose discoveries have transformed breast cancer treatment. Both are with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

“I am thrilled to welcome these outstanding health and medicine leaders into the National Academy of Medicine,” said Monica M. Bertagnolli, president of the academy. “Their extraordinary talent and commitment to advancing evidence-based guidance and solutions for our country’s greatest healthcare challenges will strengthen our efforts to improve health for all.”

Throughout her career as a researcher, Ettner has worked to advance research in the field of behavioral health economics, highlighting the benefits of behavioral health policy in easing patient financial burden.

Ettner was also the first to apply innovative econometric techniques to quantify the causal link between income and multiple physical and mental health measures.

Ettner earned bachelor’s degrees in mathematics/economics and German from UCSB and a doctorate in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She served as faculty in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School before joining UCLA in 1999.

At UCLA Fielding, she has taught and developed course materials for advanced research methods classes for the school’s doctoral students, and as dean of the Division of Graduate Education at UCLA, she provided oversight for more than 12,000 academic and professional graduate students in more than 130 degree programs.

As a scholar with more than 230 peer-reviewed publications, in 2021 Ettner was recognized as being one of the most highly cited researchers in her field. She has served as the principal investigator on 34 grants or sub-awards and as a co-investigator on 55 others. Most recently, Dr. Ettner led a comprehensive evaluation – funded by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse - of the impact of the federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act on insurance coverage and treatment for mental and substance use disorders. The analysis demonstrated that this landmark piece of legislation led to significant improvements in insurance coverage and treatment for mental health and substance use disorders.

Ettner is also a former task force member for the California Health Benefits Review Program, which provides independent analyses of the medical, financial, and public health impacts of proposed health insurance benefit mandates. Most recently, she served as the Executive Director for the International Health Economics Association, a membership organization promoting excellence in health economics, with over 1,500 members from more than 100 countries.

The combination of research excellence and commitment to academic service is why Ettner is regarded so highly by her peers, said Dr. Ninez Ponce, chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at UCLA Fielding.

“Dr. Ettner’s career as an educational and scientific leader has always focused on serving communities that otherwise are often overlooked or marginalized,” Ponce said. “This is an extremely well-deserved recognition, at the national level, of Susan’s career of service to students and dedication to the science of public health, and we are all very pleased to see it.”