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 States 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 Organization (WHO) International Collaborative Study of Dental Manpower Systems in Relationship to Oral Health Status.

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 Health. His contributions were acknowledged by colleagues in the fields of medical sociology and health services research through his receipt of the Leo G. Reeder Distinguished Medical Sociologist Award from the Medical Sociology Section 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.

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