Joseph Lipscomb

Rollins School of Public Health and Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University

Joseph Lipscomb, PhD., is Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Rollins School of Public Health and also Associate Director for Population Sciences at Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute.  From 1999 until arriving at Emory in 2004, he was Chief of the Outcomes Research Branch at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.  At NCI, he co-chaired the Cancer Outcomes Measurement Working Group, chaired the trans-agency Quality of Cancer Care Committee, and was NCI lead for a collaborative Federal effort to establish consensus measures of cancer care quality.  He has published widely on various topics in health economics and outcomes research, including on patient-reported outcomes assessment, quality-of-care evaluation and improvement, and the theory and practice of cost-effectiveness analysis. 

He was co-editor for the volume, Outcomes Assessment in Cancer: Measures, Methods, and Applications (Cambridge University Press, 2005); co-scientific editor of a Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monograph (2004) on cancer outcomes research; co-editor for a special issue of Value in Health on, “Moving the QALY Forward: Building a Pragmatic Road” (2009); co-editor of a Medical Care supplement on, “Health Care Costing: Data, Methods, and Future Directions” (2009); and co-scientific editor of a  Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monograph on “Comparing Cancer Care and Economic Outcomes across Health Systems: Challenges and Opportunities” (2013).  Dr. Lipscomb has been principal investigator on research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including studies to improve the effectiveness of cancer screening and treatment; to investigate the determinants of cancer care quality in the community; and to build the data infrastructure for population-based evaluations of cancer quality.  He serves on national committees to improve cancer outcomes and quality at both the American Cancer Society and the American College of Surgeons’ Commission on Cancer.  From 1993-96, he was a member of the U.S. Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine.  He received his PhD in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975.

Chapters Authored

Cancer