About the Program on Medicines and Public Health
Our mission is to improve equitable access and safe use of essential medicines in the U.S. and globally. Our program focuses on the development and expansion of several research initiatives focusing on access to medications, drug utilization, and pharmaceutical policy. The Program will develop and lead interdisciplinary research efforts focusing on drug utilization, access to medicines, and pharmaceutical policy to better understand why medications are used, or not used, and how they can and should be used in the population to promote equity, longevity, and good health.
Our goal is to improve our understanding of the role of medicines in public health and health equity and to promote public accountability to better ensure access to, and safe use of, medications at the national, state, and local levels. In an effort to achieve these goals, we often incorporate the health and human rights concept of ‘essential medicines’ in our research and programming.
What We Do
We conduct innovative drug utilization and pharmacoepidemiology research to better understand the underlying mechanisms responsible for the use, underuse, and unsafe use of medications, how these patterns may influence health outcomes and health disparities, and what can be done from a community and policy perspective to address these growing public health problems.
Research Areas
This program focuses on the development and expansion of several research initiatives focusing on access to medications, drug utilization and pharmaceutical policy. You can find a description of our priority research areas here.
Our Staff
The Program on Medicines and Public Health and its staff collaborates with leading health policy experts and clinical pharmacists from the USC community and a number of affiliated researchers from other academic institutions and organizations in order to solve pressing global health challenges. Learn more about our staff here.