David O. Meltzer M.D., Ph.D. is Chief of the Section of Hospital Medicine, Director of the Center for Health and the Social Sciences, and Chair of the Committee on Clinical and Translational Science at The University of Chicago, where he is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Department of Economics and the Harris School of Public Policy Studies. Meltzer's research explores problems in health economics and public policy with a focus on the theoretical foundations of medical cost-effectiveness analysis and the cost and quality of hospital care. Meltzer is completing a randomized trial comparing the use of doctors who specialize in inpatient care ("hospitalists") with traditional physicians in six academic medical centers and is Director of the AHRQ-funded Hospital Medicine and Economics Center for Education and Research in Therapeutics (CERT) at the University of Chicago.

Meltzer completed his residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Meltzer is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lee Lusted Prize of the Society for Medical Decision Making, the Health Care Research Award of the National Institute for Health Care Management, and the Eugene Garfield Award from Research America. Meltzer is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and past president of the Society for Medical Decision Making. He has served on panels examining the future of Medicare for the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and U.S. organ allocation policy for the Institute of Medicine (IOM). He is currently serving on an IOM panel on the Learning Health Care System, the DHHS Secretary's Advisory Committee on Healthy People 2020, and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute Methodology Committee, as a Council Member of the National Institute for General Medical Studies, and as a health economics advisor for the Congressional Budget Office.

Meltzer received a B.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry Economics from Yale College in 1986, a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1992, and an M.D. from the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine in 1993.