Dr. Richard 'Buz' Cooper is one of the world's preeminent voices on physician supply and has been honored for his vast contributions to health policy research. He has been professor of medicine and a senior fellow in the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia since 2005.
He served as Medical College for Wisconsin Dean from 1985 to 1994, leading the recruitment of outstanding senior faculty, the establishment and development of internationally renowned scientific research programs, and the growth of the school's reputation, as well as its physical space. He also founded the Medical College's Health Policy Institute, which he led from 1994 to 2004. The Institute is an inter-disciplinary program for studies in epidemiology, bioethics, biostatistics, patient care and outcomes research, blood and marrow transplant research and public health.
Extensive publication of his own health policy research helped change how the size of the health care workforce is evaluated and future needs are projected. When most experts were calling for a reduction in the physician workforce due to a perceived surplus, Dr. Cooper correctly predicted an impending physician shortage. In 2004, he was awarded the Casterline Award for Excellence in Writing from the Federation of State Medical Boards. He has also received distinguished service awards from the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Medical Society.
A Milwaukee native, and hematologist/oncologist by training, he served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and the University of Pennsylvania, and directed the University of Pennsylvania's Cancer Center before returning to the city to become dean of the Medical College in 1985.
Dr. Cooper served his residency on the Harvard Medical Services of the Boston City Hospital, where he also completed a fellowship in hematology, and was a clinical associate of the National Cancer Institute. He earned his medical degree with honors from Washington University in St. Louis in 1961 and received his BS degree from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and was honored with a doctoral of science in 2006.
