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Celebrating Four Decades as a Health Economist Jeff McCombs, an associate professor at the USC School of Pharmacy since 1987, is retiring after a 34-year career in higher education. In addition to being a faculty member and longtime graduate program director in the school’s Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics, he is a senior fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics and holds joint appointments in the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and the USC Price School of Public Policy. “We are grateful for Dr. McCombs’ many contributions over his long career at the school and in his health economics research, and we wish him the very best in his well-deserved retirement,” says Geoffrey Joyce, chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics. “He was the heart of the program for many years.”
We are grateful for Dr. McCombs’ many contributions over his long career at the school and in his health economics research. … He was the heart of the program for many years.” Geoffrey Joyce, chair, Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics
“He helped me to look at the bigger picture in healthcare and to speak the truth in healthcare policy,” says Robert Popovian, PharmD ’93, MS ’97, who studied under McCombs and is
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founder of Conquest Advisors and chief science policy officer at Global Health Living Foundation. Popovian adds that McCombs taught him to “question everything and never rely on assumptions.” McCombs earned his doctorate in economics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), specializing in health economics. At UCSD, McCombs received cross training at the School of Medicine through a National Center for Health Services Research predoctoral traineeship. Before joining USC, he served as assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, a senior project analyst at Applied Management Sciences in Silver Spring, Maryland, and a social science
research analyst in the Office of Research and Demonstrations at the Health Care Financing Administration. He has authored or co-authored articles appearing in publications such as the Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Health Care Financing Review, Health Affairs, Value in Health, Health Services Research, Psychiatric Services, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Medical Care, Annals of Pharmacotherapy and American Journal of Health Systems Pharmacy. McCombs has also authored or co-authored numerous book chapters and served as a consultant to the Health Care Financing Administration and several pharmaceutical companies. A reception will be held in his honor on May 15, 2022, during the annual conference of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) in Washington, D.C. Gifts in honor of his retirement may be made to the Health Economics Graduate Program. Contact Cheryl Stanovich at stanovic@usc.edu for more information and to RSVP for the reception.
He helped me to look at the bigger picture in healthcare and to speak the truth in healthcare policy.” Robert Popovian, PharmD ’93, MS ’97
