W. David Bradford, Ph.D., Director.  Dr. Bradford is the founder and current Director of the Center for Health Economic and Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), as well as a Professor in the Department of Health Administration and Policy.  Dr. Bradford received his Ph.D. in Economics from Louisiana State University in 1991, and has been a tenured faculty member at the University of New Hampshire and the Medical University of South Carolina, as well as a visiting professor at Yale University.  He has over 70 publications (both in peer-reviewed outlets, book chapters, and reports) and professional presentations and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Health Economics Letters.  He is also an Associate Editor for the journal Health Economics, and is a member of the Advisory Board for the American Society of Health Economists.  Dr. Bradford has significant experience with funded research, serving or having served as Principal Investigator on 20 extramurally funded research projects, and as co-investigator on another 17 projects. 

A significant component of Dr. Bradford’s recent research has involved the role of time preferences on health care related decisions.  He was a local team leader in a grant funded by the Department of Defense that assessed time preferences of individuals and determined the effect of those time preferences on the demand for cancer screening, and is currently team leader on a follow-on project to assess time preferences and smoking cessation.  His other primary current research area involves evaluating the impact of direct to consumer advertising for prescription pharmaceuticals, for which he has had three R01 grants as PI. In addition, he has active research and has been widely published in the areas of telemedicine and technology assessment, and estimation of inpatient and office based cost of care models.  Dr. Bradford is also actively involved in studying the economics of mental health care (particularly interventions for delinquent adolescents), the economics of cardiac care, and the economics of substance abuse and pregnancy.