W. David Bradford

• PhD, Louisiana State University, Economics, 1991
• MS, Louisiana State University, Economics, 1989
• BS, Mississippi State University, Foreign Languages, 1987

David Bradford, Ph.D., is a health economist and the George D. Busbee Chair in Public Policy in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia. Prior to joining UGA, he was the Director and founder of the Center for Health Economic and Policy Studies at the Medical University of South Carolina, and has been a visiting faculty member at Yale Medical School and a tenured faculty member in the Department of Economics at the University of New Hampshire. Dr. Bradford has over 100 publications in the fields of economics and policy analysis and significant experience with funded research, serving or having served as Principal Investigator on 20 extramurally funded research grants.

Dr. Bradford is a Co-Editor for the journals Health Economics and an Associate Editor for the Journal of the Society for Implementation Research. He has also recently served on the Executive Board of the International Health Economics Association.  As part of his other professional service, Dr. Bradford is on the oversight boards for both the American Health Economics Conference and the Southeastern Health Economics Study Group.  Dr. Bradford served a term as a permanent member of the Health Services Organization and Delivery study section for the National Institutes of Health, in addition to serving as an ad hoc member on numerous other study sections over 15 years.

Dr. Bradford has three main areas of research interests.  First, he studies the impact of drug policy, including medical cannabis laws and opioid control policies, on health outcomes and risky behaviors.  This includes estimating the association between substance and other policy decisions on opioid-related mortality. A second significant component of Dr. Bradford’s current research involves the role of time preferences on health care related decisions.  This includes several projects that assess time preferences of individuals and determines the effect of those time preferences on the demand for preventative health care.  Other related projects include joint estimation of time and risk preferences and estimating their impacts on health insurance, health utilization and other health care related decisions.  His third primary focus involves research into the U.S. pharmaceutical industry.  This includes NIH- and AHRQ-funded research on the impact of direct to consumer advertising for prescription pharmaceuticals, the impact of various information sources on pharmaceutical use, and the effectiveness of FDA post-marketing surveillance in light of competing information availability.  Finally, Dr. Bradford also works on the role of off-label prescribing of drugs on the dynamic functioning of pharmaceutical markets.

• Health policy
• Pharmaceutical policy
• Reproductive health policy
• Economic models of individual choice
• Time and risk preferences and health care decision-making
• Medicaid and Medicare policy
• Health econometric methods
• Cost-benefit analysis
• Economics of mental health (particularly youth delinquency)
• Cost-effectiveness analysis
• Economics of tobacco and substance use

• Richard Green Founding Editor Essay Award, 2023 (best paper published in Archives of Sexual Behavior)
• Georgescu-Roegen Prize, 2012 (Best academic paper published in Southern Economic Journal)
• Certificate of Appreciation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Effectiveness Fellowship Program, August 2006
• College of Health Professions Scholar of the Year, Medical University of South Carolina, 2000
• Whittemore School of Business and Economics Summer Research Grant, University of New Hampshire, 1996
• Department of Economics 1995-96 Outstanding Scholar, University of New Hampshire
• University of New Hampshire Summer Faculty Fellowship, Summer 1995
• University of New Hampshire Summer Faculty Fellowship, Summer 1994
• Excellence in Teaching Award, College of Business, Louisiana State University, 1990
• Excellence in Teaching Award, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University, 1989 and 1990

• DPAP 6950 – Foundations of Policy Analysis
• DPAP 8140 – Advanced Methods
• DPAP 8640 – Program Evaluation
• DPAP 8650 – Policy Seminar: Demand Side of Health Economics

• Role of time preferences in decision making
• Health economic policy
• Reproductive health policy
• Impact of information on pharmaceutical markets
• Behavioral economics
• Econometric methodology
• Substance use policy

Recent publications (from over 100)

1. Steuart SR, Bethel V, Bradford WD. “Cannabis and Pediatric Cannabis Exposure – Evidence from America’s Poison Centers.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. (Forthcoming).

2. Lozano-Rojas F, Abraham A, Gupta S, Bradford WD. “The Effect of Medical Cannabis Laws on Use of Pain Medications Among Commercially Insured Patients in the United States: A Synthetic Control Approach.” American Journal of Health Economics. (Forthcoming).

3. Lozano Rojas F, Bethel V, Gupta S, Steuart SR, Bradford WD, Abraham AJ. “Cannabis Laws and Opioid Utilization Among Commercially Insured Patients with Cancer Diagnoses.” JAMA – Health Forum. (Forthcoming).

4. Bradford AC, Lozano-Rojas F, Shone HB, Bradford WD, Abraham AJ. “Cannabis Laws and Utilization of Medications for the Treatment of Mental Health Disorders.” JAMA – Network Open. 7(9): e2432021-e2432021. 2024

5. Cesur R, Sabia JJ, Bradford WD. “The Effect of Combat Deployments on Veteran Opioid Abuse.” Health Economics. 33(6), 1284-1318. 2024.

6. Bradford WD, Lozano-Rojas F. “Higher Rates of Homelessness Are Associated with Increases in Accidental Drug and Alcohol Mortality.” Health Affairs. 43.2 (2024): 242-249. 2024

7. Steuart SR, Bradford WD. “The Association Between Medical Cannabis Laws and Flows of Opioids by Dosage Strength to US Pharmacies – Evidence from Detailed ARCOS Data, 2006-2014.” Contributions in Economic Analysis. Volume 297: 167-200. 2024.

8. Bradford, AC, Bradford WD. “The Effect of State Housing Policies on Eviction Filings and Judgements in the United States, 2001-2018.” Housing Policy Debate. 2023: 1-21.

9. Andraka-Christou  B, Nguyen T, Bradford WD, Simon K. “Buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder: comparison of insurance restrictions across payers, 2017-2021.” Health Affairs. 42(5): 658-664. 2023.

10. Raman S, Maclean JC, Bradford WD, Drake C. “Recreational Cannabis and Opioid Distribution.” Health Economics. 32(4): 747-754. 2023

11. Bradford WD, Doucette MH. “Effect of a Brief Intervention on Respondents’ Subjective Perception of Time and Discount Rates.” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. 66:47-75. 2023.

12. Nguyen T, Andraka-Christou B, Arnaudo C, Bradford WD, Simon K, Spetz J. “Analysis of County Characteristics and Clinicians Authorized to prescribe Buprenorphine Following Changes in Federal Education Requirements.” JAMA – Network Open. 5(10): e2237912. 2022.

13. Nguyen T, Chua KP, Andraka-Christou B, Bradford WD, Simon K. “Trends in Buprenorphine Coverage and Prior Authorization Requirements in US Commercial Formularies: 2017-2021.” JAMA Health Forum. 3(7): 221821. 2022.

14. Nguyen T, Andraka-Christou B, Bradford WD, Simon K. “Opting into the Public List of DATA-Waivered Practitioners: Variations by Specialty, Treatment Capacity, and Practitioner Characteristics” Journal of Addiction Medicine. 16(3): 197-202. 2022.

15. Krousel-Wood M, Peacock E, Bradford WD, Mohundro B, Craig LS, O’Connell S, Bazzano L, Shi L, Ford M. “Time preference for immediate gratification: Associations with low medication adherence and uncontrolled blood pressure” American Journal of Hypertension. 35(3), 256-263. 2022.

16. Abraham AJ, Lawler EC, Harris SJ, Adams GB, Bradford WD. “Spillover of Medicaid Expansion to Prescribing of Opioid Use Disorder Medications in Medicare Part D.” Psychiatric Services. 73(4), 418-424. 2022.

17. Nguyen T, Cantor J, Andraka-Christou B, Bradford WD, Simon K. “Where Did the  Specialty Behavioral Health Workforce Grow between 2011 and 2019? Evidence from Census Data.” Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment.  130 (2021): 108482. 2021.

18. Krousel-Wood M, Craig LS, Peacock E, Zlotnicj E, O’Connell S, Bradford WD, Shi L, and Petty R. “Medication Adherence: Expanding the Conceptual Framework.” American Journal of Hypertension. 34(9), 895-909. 2021.

19. Nguyen T, Spetz J, Meunch U, Andraka-Christou B, Bradford WD, Simon K. “The Association between Scope of Practice Regulations and Nurse Practitioner Prescribing of Buprenorphine after the 2016 Opioid Bill.” Medical Care Research and Review. 79(2), 290-298. 2021.

20. Atkins DN, Bradford WD. “The Effect of State-Level Sex Education Policies on Youth Sexual Behaviors.” Archives of Sexual Behavior. 50: 2321-2333. 2021.

21. Andraka-Christou B, Nguyen T, Bradford WD, Simon K. “Assessing the Impact of Drug Courts on Provider-Directed Marketing Efforts by Manufactures of Medications for the Treatment of Opioid Use Disorder.” Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment. 110:(March) 49-58. 2020.

22. Zier ER, Bradford WD. “To Attend or Not to Attend? The Effect of School-Immunization Exemption Policies on Enrollment Rates for Prekindergarten, Kindergarten and Elementary Aged Youth.” Vaccine. 38(11): 2578-2584. 2020.

23. Bradford AC, Bradford WD. “The Effect of Evictions on Accidental Drug and Alcohol Mortality.” Health Services Research. 55(1): 9-17. 2020.