Andersen, Ronald M.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1939, Ronald Max Andersen received his bachelor’s degree (1960) from the Santa Clara University and his master’s (1962) and doctorate (1968) degrees from Purdue University. From 1974 to 1990, Ronald Andersen worked at the Center for Health Administration Studies (CHAS) in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. From 1980 to 1990, he was the director of the Program for Health Administration and CHAS. In 1991, he became the Wasserman Professor of Health Services and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2004, he became Professor Emeritus.

During his academic career, Andersen has made major conceptual and methodological contributions to the study of healthcare utilization behavior and access to healthcare through the design and conduct of large-scale community, national, and cross-national health surveys. In 1968, he published a monograph introducing the behavioral model of families’ use of health services, based on an analysis of a 1963 national survey of healthcare utilization and expenditures. This model, and Andersen and his colleagues’ successive adaptations of it, continue to guide much of the explanatory research on healthcare utilization behavior.

Andersen’s subsequent work built directly on these interests. He was principal investigator for national health surveys conducted in 1970 and 1976. The latter survey extended his earlier conceptual and empirical work on utilization to examining the issues of access to healthcare. The access framework developed in connection with that survey served to guide the development of community survey-based evaluations of the Community Hospital Program and Municipal Health Services Program, conducted by the CHAS, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Andersen was also the principal investigator for subsequent projects to conduct secondary analyses of data collected through these and related state, community, and national surveys.

Andersen also provided leadership in the study of healthcare delivery system issues in the United StatesPain. Read more ... » through the design and implementation of the National Study of Internal Medicine Manpower, a national evaluation of home-care programs for ventilator-assisted children, studies of health services use by the homeless, and evaluation of community-based dental programs and related dental health profession needs. He extended the application of his empirical and conceptual interests in these areas to the design and conduct of cross-national comparative studies of utilization and access through the World Health OrganizationMental Health Epidemiology. Read more ... » (WHOKane, Robert L.. Read more ... ») International Collaborative Study of Dental Manpower Systems in Relationship to Oral Health StatusRAND Health Insurance Experiment. Read more ... ».

Andersen has received numerous awards and honors. He was named the Fred and Pamela Wasserman Professor of Health Services at the UCLA School of Public HealthHealth Planning. Read more ... ». His contributions were acknowledged by colleagues in the fields of medical sociologyMedical Sociology. Read more ... » and health services researchUniversity HealthSystem Consortium. Read more ... » through his receipt of the Leo G. Reeder Distinguished Medical Sociologist Award from the Medical Sociology SectionMedical Sociology. Read more ... » of the American Sociological Association (1994), the Association for Health Services Research Distinguished Investigator Award (1996), and the Health Services Research Prize from the Baxter Allegiance Foundation (1999). His lifetime scholarly achievements were acknowledged by his receiving the Distinguished Alumnus Award (1998) and an honorary doctorate degree (1999) from Purdue University.

Lu Ann Aday

See also Access, Models of; Access to Healthcare; Aday, Lu Ann; Anderson, Odin W.; Health Services Research, Origins; Medical Sociology; Public Policy

Further Readings
Andersen, Ronald M. A Behavioral Model of Families’ Use of Health Services. Chicago: University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business, Center for Health Administration Studies, 1968.
Andersen, Ronald M. “Revisiting the Behavioral Model and Access to Medical CareRAND Health Insurance Experiment. Read more ... »: Does It Matter?” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 36(1): 1–10, March 1995.
Andersen, Ronald M., Thomas H. Rice, and Gerald F. Kominski, eds. Changing the U.S. Health Care SystemMedical Travel. Read more ... »: Key Issues in Health Services Policy and Management. 3d ed. San FranciscoProject HOPE. Read more ... »: Jossey-Bass, 2007.
Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance. Insuring America’s Health: Principles and Recommendations. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2004.
Davidson, Pamela L., Ronald M. Andersen, Roberta WynKaiser Family Foundation. Read more ... », et al. “A Framework for Evaluating Safety-Net and Other Community-Level Factors on Access for Low-Income Populations,” Inquiry 41: 21–38, Spring 2004.
Lewis, Joy H., Ronald M. Andersen, and Lillian Gelberg. “Health CareQuality of Well-Being Scale. Read more ... » for Homeless Women: Unmet Needs and Barriers to Care,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 18: 921–28, 2003.

Web Sites
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Center for Health PolicyUrban Institute. Read more ... » Research:  http://www.healthpolicy.ucla.edu