William V. Padula, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics at USC Mann and a fellow at the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics. Prior to his arrival at USC, he was assistant professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
His healthcare research explores the theoretical foundations of medical cost-effectiveness analysis, especially pertaining to issues around drug pricing and patient safety in hospitals. He has recently been evaluating the use of data analytics to predict acute health complications in hospitalized patients. He has taught economic evaluation modeling curriculum extensively throughout the U.S. and globally. He has performed innovative comparative effectiveness research and cost-effectiveness analysis of quality-improvement strategies to prevent hospital-acquired pressure injuries (aka “bedsores”). In 2017, he and colleagues collaborated with the Maryland attorney general to pass bipartisan Maryland state legislation to restrict price hikes on generic pharmaceuticals—the first of its kind in the U.S.
In addition to USC, he maintains adjunct appointments at Johns Hopkins University in the School of Nursing and the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Hopkins Medicine. He holds an honorary appointment at the University of Technology Sydney, and has been a visiting fellow at the Oxford Institute for Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Research in Oxford, UK. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow in health economics at the University of Chicago and led an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality–funded investigation to develop predictive risk algorithms using electronic health record data.
He is the recipient of the 2015 AcademyHealth Outstanding Dissertation Award and an ISPOR Best Research Award. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel and as a commissioner for the American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet Recognition Program.
Padula received his PhD in pharmaceutical outcomes research from the University of Colorado. He holds two master’s degrees—in analytics from The University of Chicago and evaluative clinical science from Dartmouth College—as well as a BS in chemical engineering from Northwestern University.