Mark S. Roberts, MD, MPP is Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management, and holds secondary appointments in Medicine, Industrial Engineering, Business Administration and Clinical and Translational Science. A former practicing general internist, he has conducted research in decision analysis and the mathematical modeling of disease for over 35 years, and has expertise in cost effectiveness analysis, mathematical optimization and simulation, and the measurement and inclusion of patient preferences into decision problems. He has used decision sciences to examine clinical, costs, policy and allocation questions in liver transplantation, vaccination strategies, operative interventions, influenza, COVID-19, HIV and the use of many medications. His recent research has concentrated in the use of mathematical methods from operations research and management science, including Markov Decision Processes, Discrete Event and Agent-based Simulation. As director of the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory, he continues to lead the development of simulation tools for representing complex diseases and the evaluation of policies to improve health and public health. The PHDL is currently one of 4 CDC-funded Influenza and Covid Modeling centers.
His methodological interests are in decision sciences, cost effectiveness analysis, comparative effectiveness, operations research, simulation modeling, clinical research methods, quality of life and utility analysis, and inference in observational studies; his content interests in health care financing and physician and patient incentives, transplantation, HIV care, infectious diseases, diagnostic tests, the opioid epidemic, preventive care and tailoring clinical guidelines to individual patients.
