John “Mick” Tilford currently serves as a Professor and Chair of Health Policy and Management, Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Dr. Tilford also served as the Director of the Ph.D. program in Health Systems and Services Research at UAMS from 2012-2015. He has a secondary appointment in the Division of Pharmaceutical Evaluation and Policy in the College of Pharmacy. Dr. Tilford teaches courses in health economics to students in PhD and master’s level programs. His research program focuses on methods for the economic evaluation of health services. He has studied the cost-effectiveness of improving outcomes in children with traumatic brain injuries, quality of care associated with intensive care units, and quality-adjusted life years in children with chronic conditions, especially children with autism. Recent areas of interest include the development of methods for incorporating family effects in economic evaluations and the effect of health policies on racial and ethnic disparities in care. He received his Ph.D. in health economics from Wayne State University (1993) with the assistance of a dissertation grant from the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now AHRQ).

John Tilford is a 2019 grantee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health Data for Action program, managed by AcademyHealth.