Neil R. Powe, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A.

Neil Powe is the Constance B. Wofsy Distinguished Professor at the University of California San Francisco and Chief of Medicine at the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, a public safety net hospital serving the poor, older adults, uninsured working families, and immigrants.  His research has advanced understanding of optimal provision of health care especially for the most vulnerable by using health services research to interrogate medical practices, payment policies and health disparities. He has studied: coverage, access, utilization, costs and financial incentives in Medicare and Medicaid, particularly for persons with kidney disease; technology coverage by health insurance plans; digitization of health records; healthcare disparities including access to transplantation; and the relation between burden of disease and NIH funding.  

Dr. Powe earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton, MD and MPH degrees from Harvard and completed residency, fellowship as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and an MBA from the Wharton Graduate School at the University of Pennsylvania. As a Wharton Public Policy Fellow he worked on health care finance in the Executive Secretariat of the Department of Health and Human Services, serving as a foundation for understanding how evidence shapes health care finance and policy decisions and preparing him for translating research into policy.  

He has served on National Academy of Medicine committees on: redesigning health insurance, benefits, payment and performance improvement programs; priorities for comparative effectiveness research; Medicare coverage of screening practices, design of the national health care disparities report, conflicts of interest, and collection/use of race in research.  He chaired the National Academy of Social Insurance Committee on COVID pandemic implications for social insurance, the AHRQ National Advisory Committee, the JAMA Oversight Committee, and the National Advisory Committee of the Amos Institute for Medical Faculty Development where he mentors and advances careers of health services researchers who are addressing major challenges in health care delivery and health policy. He has served as Chief Scientific Officer of the Commonwealth Fund and as member of the PCORI Methodology Committee.  At AcademyHealth he has served on the Board of Directors, Article-of-the-Year Review Committee, Annual Research Meeting Planning Committee, and Diversity Career Development Committee.  

He was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, American Society of Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He was recognized with the TIME100 award in 2024 as one of the most influential people in health, the John M. Eisenberg Award for Career Achievement in Research and Robert J. Glaser Award from the Society of General Internal Medicine, the Herbert W. Nickens Award from the AAMC, and the John Phillips Memorial Award for Distinguished Contributions from the American College of Physicians. He has testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the Medicare End Stage Renal Disease Program and before the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress on technology, innovation and health care costs.