The Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies was founded in 1972 as the Health Policy Program within the School of Medicine on the University of California, San Francisco campus. It was the first program to bring together on the campus of a major academic health sciences center a multidisciplinary group of faculty (medicine, law, ethics, and pharmacology) committed to developing an innovative unit with health policy as its focus.

Philip R. Lee, MD, third UCSF Chancellor (1969-1972) and senior federal health policy official in two administrations (1965-1969 and (1993-1997), was founder of the Institute. In September 2007, the Institute was renamed for Dr. Lee in his honor.

Dr. Lee and other founding faculty members, Lewis H. Butler, LLB, Michael L. Parker, JD, Albert R. Jonsen, PhD, and Milton M. Silverman, PhD, were committed to providing accurate, relevant, and timely information to members of Congress and their staff, senior officials in federal agencies, California legislators, state and local health departments, health care administrators, private sector decision-makers, community-based organizations, and the public.

These early leaders were also committed to building a foundation for health policy on the UCSF campus that emphasized collaborative research, teaching health professions students, training post-doctoral fellows, and mentoring future clinicians, researchers, and health policy leaders.

In 1981, the Board of Regents of the University of California designated the Institute as an organized research unit, strengthening its ability to collaborate with departments and schools on the UCSF and other campuses.

The legacy of the Institute reflects the clear vision for the Health Policy Program when it was founded. Basic and applied research and policy analysis, education and training, technical assistance, and public service were to be undertaken together in a single setting, with a multidisciplinary faculty and staff and collaborators on the UCSF campus, other University campuses, and in the community.

Today the Institute is one of the nation’s premier centers for health policy and health services research. We conduct research on the health care system and health care reform, child health, adolescent health, reproductive health, chronic illness, work and health, HIV/AIDS, prescription drug policies, substance abuse, research integrity, and biomedical communications.

The Institute has more than 100 faculty, research and administrative staff, and fellows. Institute faculty have appointments in departments within the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy, and faculty and research staff include physicians, health services researchers, policy analysts, psychologists, political scientists, health economists, sociologists, anthropologists, epidemiologists, pharmacologists, and those trained in public health.