Ken Thorpe steps down as health policy chair

Kenneth Thorpe, PhD, is stepping down as chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management (HPM), a position he has held for 22 years. He will remain in the department as the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Health Policy.

Thorpe was already a prominent leader in the field when he joined Rollins in 1999, having served as the U.S. deputy assistant secretary for health policy during the Clinton administration. James W. Curran, MD, MPH, who was dean of Rollins at the time, saw the potential Thorpe’s reputation offered the school.

“I knew he would be a good recruiter, and he has been, bringing many prominent faculty on board,” says Curran. “He greatly elevated the status of the department in what was still a fairly new school.”

Under Thorpe’s leadership, HPM faculty tripled in size, and research programs broadened to include health care reform, economics of disease and health care delivery, and development and evaluation of policies and practice aimed at disease prevention and health promotion in cancer, chronic disease, and mental health. The department expanded its original MPH concentration in health policy to include a concentration in health management, an MSPH in health services research, and an accelerated one-year program in health care management. Thorpe established a doctoral program with concentrations in health services research and health policy. A newly proposed concentration in organizational theory is under review.

“Ken has been responsible for building the Department of Health Policy and Management into a nationally recognized program,” says Michael Johns, inaugural Michael M.E. Johns, MD, Chair in Health Policy, emeritus executive vice president for health affairs at Emory, and emeritus president and CEO of Emory Healthcare.

When Thorpe served in the Clinton administration, he played a major role in crafting the ill-fated health care reform bill.

“I was in charge of crunching all the numbers,” says Thorpe. “We had to calculate how much money we could raise to determine where we would allocate those dollars, how generous the subsidies could be, etc. I wasn’t involved in any of the microdetails, but the budgeting process set the overall focus and scope of the proposed reforms.”

Thorpe reprised this effort under President Obama, working on two major provisions of the Affordable Care Act. He currently chairs the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease, an international coalition focused on highlighting the impact of chronic disease on health care spending and identifying prevention and care coordination strategies to address these issues.

Notes Johns, “Ken has made significant contributions to Emory, to the Rollins School of Public Health, and to the field of public health at large.”