Advisory Committee

David O. Meltzer, Ph.D., M.D., is Chief of the Section of Hospital Medicine, Director of the Center for Health and the Social Sciences, and Chair of the Committee on Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Chicago, where he is Professor in the Department of Medicine, and affiliated faculty at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the Department of Economics. Meltzer’s research explores problems in health economics and public policy with a focus on the theoretical foundations of medical cost-effectiveness analysis and the cost and quality of hospital care. Meltzer has performed randomized trials comparing the use of doctors who specialize in inpatient care (“hospitalists”). He is currently leading a Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Innovation Challenge award to study the effects of improved continuity in the doctor patient relationship between the inpatient and outpatient setting on the costs and outcomes of care for frequently hospitalized Medicare patients. He led the formation of the Chicago Learning Effectiveness Advancement Research Network (Chicago LEARN) that helped pioneer collaboration of Chicago-Area academic medical centers in hospital-based comparative effectiveness research and the recent support of the Chicago Area Patient Centered Outcomes Research Network (CAPriCORN) by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).

Meltzer received his M.D. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and completed his residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Meltzer is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lee Lusted Prize of the Society for Medical Decision Making, the Health Care Research Award of the National Institute for Health Care Management, and the Eugene Garfield Award from Research America. Meltzer is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and past president of the Society for Medical Decision Making. He has served on several IOM panels, include one examining U.S. organ allocation policy and the recent panel on the Learning Health Care System that produced Best Care at Lower Cost. He also has served on the DHHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Healthy People 2020, the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Methodology Committee, as a Council Member of the National Institute for General Medical Studies, and as a health economics advisor for the Congressional Budget Office.

Beth Bortz was named the President and CEO of the Virginia Center for Health Innovation (VCHI) in March 2012. Prior to joining VCHI, she served as the Executive Director of the Medical Society of Virginia (MSV) Foundation, where she developed and led programs in health care quality improvement, medication assistance, public health awareness, and physician leadership since 2002. Ms. Bortz also served as Senior Program Officer and Deputy Director of the Virginia Health Care Foundation for seven years and as a Senior Associate Legislative Analyst for the Virginia General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission for three years.

Bortz is a 2007 graduate of LEAD Virginia and recently served as its Alumni Chair. She was a founding board member of Rx Partnership, serving as Board Chair from 2006-2008. She has received several awards and recognition for her work, including: Influential Women of Virginia Award from Virginia Lawyer’s Media; Medallion Award for Community Partnership from Mutual of America; and Stettinius Award for Nonprofit Leadership from the Community Foundation representing Greater Richmond. 

Bortz earned her undergraduate degree in Economics and Government and her Masters in Public Policy from the College of William and Mary. Most recently she earned a graduate certificate in Non-profit Management from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Peter J. Neumann, Sc.D., is Director of the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health at the Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies at Tufts Medical Center, and Professor of Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. Prior to joining Tufts Medical Center, Neumann was on the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health. His research focuses on the use of comparative effectiveness research and cost-effectiveness analysis in health care decision making.

Neumann is the founder and director of the Cost-Effectiveness Registry (www.cearegistry.org), a comprehensive database of cost-effectiveness analyses in health care. He has written widely on the role of clinical and economic evidence in pharmaceutical decision making and on regulatory and reimbursement issues in health care. He served as co-chair of the 2^nd Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine. He is the author or co-author of over 250 papers in the medical literature, the author of Using Cost-Effectiveness Analysis to Improve Health Care (Oxford University Press, 2005) and co-editor of Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, 2^nd Edition (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Neumann has served as President of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR), and as a trustee of the Society for Medical Decision Making. He is a member of the editorial advisory boards of Health Affairs and Value in Health and serves on many advisory boards, including for the Congressional Budget Office and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Neumann has also held several policy positions in Washington, including Special Assistant to the Administrator at the Health Care Financing Administration. He received his doctorate in health policy and management from Harvard University.

Neel Shah, M.D., M.P.P., FACOG, is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School, and Director of the Delivery Decisions Initiative at Harvard’s Ariadne Labs. As an obstetrician-gynecologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Shah cares for patients at critical life moments that range from childbirth to primary care to surgery. As a scientist and social entrepreneur, he is a globally recognized expert in designing, testing and spreading solutions that improve healthcare.

Shah is listed among the "40 smartest people in health care" by the Becker's Hospital Review, and has been profiled by the New York Times, CNN, and other outlets. He is senior author of the book Understanding Value-Based Healthcare (McGraw-Hill), which Don Berwick has called "an instant classic" and Atul Gawande called "a masterful primer for all clinicians."

Prior to joining the Harvard faculty, Shah founded Costs of Care, a global NGO that curates insights from clinicians to help delivery systems provide better care. In 2017, Shah co-founded the March for Moms Association, a coalition of 20 leading organizations, to increase public and private investment in the wellbeing of mothers.

Steven M. Teutsch, M.P.H., M.D., is an independent consultant; Adjunct Professor at the Fielding School of Public Health, UCLA; Senior Fellow at the Public Health Institute; and Senior Fellow, Schaeffer Center, University of Southern California. He was formerly the Chief Science Officer, Los Angeles County Public Health where he worked on evidence-based public health and policy. He had been in Outcomes Research and Management program at Merck where he was responsible for scientific leadership in developing evidence-based clinical management programs, conducting outcomes research studies, and improving outcomes measurement to enhance quality of care. Prior to joining Merck he was Director of the Division of Prevention Research and Analytic Methods (DPRAM) at CDC where he was responsible for assessing the effectiveness, safety, and the cost-effectiveness of disease and injury prevention strategies.  DPRAM developed comparable methodology for studies of the effectiveness and economic impact of prevention programs, provided training in these methods, developed CDC’s capacity for conducting necessary studies, and provided technical assistance for conducting economic and decision analysis. The Division also evaluated the impact of interventions in urban areas, developed the Guide to Community Preventive Services, and provided support for CDC’s analytic methods. He has served as a member of that Task Force and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force which develops the Guide to Clinical Preventive Services as well as on Americas Health Information Community Personalized Health Care Workgroup and the Evaluation of Genomic Applications in Prevention and Practice (EGAPP) Workgroup. He chaired the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Genetics Health and Society, and served on and has chaired IOM panels, Medicare’s Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee, and formerly on several subcommittees of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Healthy People 2020.  He has served on multiple Institute of Medicine panels.

Teutsch came to CDC in 1977, where he was assigned to the Parasitic Diseases Division and worked extensively on toxoplasmosis.  He was then assigned to the Kidney Donor and subsequently the Kidney Disease Program.  He developed the framework for CDC's diabetes control program. He joined the Epidemiology Program Office and became the Director of the Division of Surveillance and Epidemiology where he was responsible for coordinating CDC's disease monitoring activities.  He became Chief of the Prevention Effectiveness Activity in 1992.

Teutsch was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received his undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences at Harvard University in 1970, an M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health in 1973, and his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine in 1974. He completed his residency training in internal medicine at Pennsylvania State University, Hershey. He was certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 1977, the American Board of Preventive Medicine in 1995, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and American College of Preventive Medicine. Teutsch is an Adjunct Professor at the Emory University School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management; U. No. Carolina School of Public Health; adjunct professor at UCLA School of Public Health, and Senior Scholar at the Schaeffer Center at the University of Southern California.