Susan L. Ettner, PhD, is a faculty associate at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. She is the dean of graduate education at UCLA, a professor in the division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and a professor in the Department of Health Services at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Her research interests include mental health and substance abuse services, reciprocity in the relationship between health and labor market outcomes, insurance markets and managed care, chronic disability, and post-acute and long-term care.
Ettner teaches an advanced research methods course for doctoral students in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and is involved in a number of research projects, including a study of the cost-effectiveness of a randomized, integrated patient-provider intervention to prevent harmful and hazardous alcohol use in the elderly; an administrative data analysis of treatment patterns and their relationship to outcomes among managed behavioral health patients; a pilot study of provider financial incentives for improving the quality of depression care; an evaluation of the impact of the Medicare Part D benzodiazepine exclusion on managed care patients with anxiety diagnoses or a history of benzodiazepine use; and an assessment of predictors of health services and long-term care use among triply diagnosed HIV+ patients.
Ettner is also a member of the task force and legislative analyst for the California Health Benefits Review Program (CHBRP), which provides independent analyses of the medical, financial, and public health impacts of proposed health insurance benefit mandates.
