Helene Levens Lipton, PhD
Professor of Health Policy
Department of Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy
University of California, San Francisco
Core Faculty Member
Institute for Health Policy Studies, School of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco
Helene Levens Lipton, PhD, is a professor in the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s Department of Clinical Pharmacy, and a co-principal investigator of the grant supporting the Partners in D program. Dr. Lipton is a nationally recognized, leading health care scholar and teacher with more than 25 years of experience in domestic and global pharmaceutical policy. Her specific research interests include vulnerable populations’ access to prescription drug coverage, interventions designed to improve the equality and economy of prescribing, and the impact of emerging pharmaceutical programs and policies.
Dr. Lipton’s scholarship has been regularly published in leading clinical, health services research, and policy journals. Her expertise was recognized at the national level when she was asked to give testimony before the United States Congress on geriatric drug policy issues. In addition, her innovative teaching and research have been recognized and funded by federal and state funders and private foundations, including the National Institutes of Health.
Recently, Dr. Lipton has investigated policy options surrounding the provisions of outpatient prescription drug benefits for Medicare beneficiaries. She has also developed new educational programs for enhancing pharmacy students’ abilities to understand health policy through the examination of the new Medicare benefit. It was this work that led to the creation of the Partners in D program alongside co-principal investigator Dr. Marilyn Stebbins.
Dr. Lipton also has examined other activities designed to promote access to needed drug therapies, both in the United States and in developing countries. On the global scale, she was the first Visiting Scholar at the Institute for OneWorld Health, the nation’s first non-profit drug company, where she investigated the ethical and social issues surrounding clinical trials. Dr. Lipton earned a Doctor of Philosophy in sociology from the University of Wisconsin (Madison). She was a Robert Wood Johnson postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She has been a UCSF faculty member since 1980.
