Joy Melnikow, MD, MPH

University of California, Davis

Titles and Affiliations: 

  • Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, Davis

Dr. Joy Melnikow’s research focuses on cancer screening and prevention in women, patient preferences, cost-effectiveness and value in healthcare, and how evidence is used to formulate health policy. She led an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)-funded post-doctoral training program in quality, safety, and comparative effectiveness research methods; was a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force from 2009 to 2012, and was appointed by California Governor Edmund “Jerry” Brown to the Let’s Get Healthy California Task Force in 2012.

She previously worked for the Indian Health Service on the Navajo reservation and was on the faculty at MetroHealth/Case Western Reserve University before joining the Department of Family and Community Medicine at UC Davis in 1992. Dr. Melnikow received her MD from UCSF, her MPH in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed her family practice residency training at the University of Massachusetts. She was awarded the UC Davis School of Medicine Dean’s Prize for Excellence in Research Teams in 2012 and the UC Davis Academic Senate Award for Distinguished Scholarly Public Service in 2013.