The Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont has announced the appointment of Adam Atherly, Ph.D., as the College’s first director of the health services research center and professor of medicine, effective February 1, 2018. Atherly is currently a professor of health systems, management and policy at the Colorado School of Public Health.

In this newly-created position, Atherly will report to Senior Associate Dean for Research Gordon Jensen, M.D., Ph.D. He will be responsible for guiding the integration of the College’s health services research program into a center model with research, education/training, and service components. As the director of this new center, Atherly will work with Larner College of Medicine faculty engaged in health services research, as well as closely collaborate with the College of Medicine’s partners at the UVM Medical Center and their Jeffords Institute for Quality, the UVM Health Network, Vermont Blueprint for Health, the Vermont Department of Health, the Green Mountain Care Board, and OneCare Vermont.

Atherly holds a Ph.D. in health services research, policy and administration from the University of Minnesota, and an M.A. in economics from the University of Washington. He joined the Colorado School of Public Health as associate professor and founding chair of the Department of Health Systems, Management and Policy in 2009 and was promoted to full professor in 2016. He previously held positions at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. 

“The College is poised to make a major investment in health services research and we are thrilled that Dr. Atherly will be joining us to lead this center, which will promote improved health and healthcare for the people of Vermont,” said Jensen. “His expertise on Medicare is especially relevant as we seek to deliver the very best healthcare to our aging population.” 

Consistently funded since 2002 by such agencies as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, NIH, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Atherly’s research targets health economics, with an emphasis on the economics of aging and consumer decisions regarding health plan choice. His research spans numerous methodological and topical areas, including healthcare spending and expenditure modeling, scale development and psychometric analysis, evaluation of efforts to improve quality of care and patient safety and cost-effectiveness analysis. He’s published more than 70 journal articles and book chapters and has presented his work at more than 75 national and international professional meetings.

“Dr. Atherly’s recruitment to Vermont comes at a propitious time,” says Richard Galbraith, M.D., Ph.D., UVM vice president for research. “The size of Vermont, its aging population, and the new approaches underway to deliver better care make UVM the perfect place to consolidate the large number of talented health professionals involved in multiple aspects of health services research across the State of Vermont.”