Luisa Franzini, Ph.D.

Luisa Franzini is Associate Professor and Director of the Division of Management, Policy, and Community Health at the University of Texas School of Public Health (UTSPH) in Houston, Texas where she has worked for the past 15 years. Before moving to Texas, she taught at the Wharton Business School and the Economics Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She trained as an econometrician and received her B.Sc, M.Sc, and Ph.D. in Economics and Econometrics form the London School of Economics (England). She is currently engaged in research in the fields of health economics and socioeconomic determinants of health.

Dr. Franzini has extensive experience in cost and cost-effectiveness analysis. Her interests include assessing the cost-effectiveness of healthcare related interventions and estimating hospital treatment costs. Additionally, she has conducted numerous studies on costs of medical education at medical institutions. She has developed methods to assess the cost of undergraduate and graduate medical education and published extensively in the area of estimating the cost of health care provider education.  Another area of her research is health disparities, stemming from the notion that socioeconomic disparities at the individual and group level are the root cause of these disparities. Her research addresses the pathways through which socioeconomic disparities affect health, including trust, cultural factors, religion, policies to reduce disparities, healthcare disparities, and disparities in parenting and academic achievement. Recently, Dr. Franzini became involved in efforts to improve healthcare quality for vulnerable populations. She is implementing and evaluating medical home interventions for Medicaid chronically ill patients and for high risk children.

Contact:
Luisa Franzini, PhD
Professor and Director

Division of Management, Policy, and Community Health
University of Texas School of Public Health
1200 Pressler Drive
Houston, TX 77030
Phone:  (713) 500-9487
Fax: (713) 500-9493
email: Luisa.Franzini@uth.tmc.edu