Robert Brook

Robert H. Brook, M.D., Sc. D., is vice-president and director of RAND Health, and professor of Medicine and Health Services at the Center for Health Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he directs the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program.  A board-certified internist, he received his M.D. and Sc.D. degrees from Johns Hopkins University.  He has been on the medical school faculty at UCLA since 1974, and divides his research time between UCLA and RAND.   

A prolific scholar, Bob has published nearly 300 peer-reviewed articles in the course of his long and productive career.  He conducted pioneering work in the field of quality measurement.  He operationalized the concept of appropriateness by establishing the scientific basis for determining whether various medical and surgical procedures were being used appropriately.  More than any other individual, he is responsible for focusing policymakers' attention on quality-of-care issues and their implications for the nation's health.  Most of the quality of care and health status measures being used today throughout the developed world were developed by Bob or by research teams that he led.  Bob's personal contribution to improving health care services in the United States and abroad is amplified many times by his training, either formally or informally, the best and the brightest-and the most influential-of an entire generation of health services scholars.  

Bob has received numerous professional honors, including the Peter Reizenstein Prize, 2000, for his paper "Defining and Measuring Quality of Care:  A Perspective from US Researchers," the National Committee for Quality Assurance Health Quality Award for pursuit of health care quality at all levels of the health system, Research!America's 2000 Advocacy Award for Sustained Leadership at the National Level, the Robert J. Glaser Award of the Society of General Internal Medicine, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award of the American College of Physicians, and the Distinguished Health Services Research Award of the Association of Health Services Research.  He is an elected member of many professional organizations, including the Institute of Medicine, the American Association of Physicians, the Western Association of Physicians, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation.  He was selected as one of 75 Heroes of Public Health by Johns Hopkins University and is a member of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars.  

In 2002, Bob was named chair of a panel to advise the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development on how to report outcomes of coronary artery bypass graft surgery at California hospitals.