Samuel H. Zuvekas, Ph.D.

Samuel H. Zuvekas, Ph.D., directs a staff of health economists, statisticians, social scientists, and support staff conducting analyses and supporting extramural research on issues related to health care access, costs, and financing. He is also responsible for the design and fielding of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), which is a family of nationally representative surveys of health care use, expenditures, and insurance coverage that is widely used by policymakers and researchers in analyses of the U.S. health care system.

Dr. Zuvekas has conducted research projects on a variety of health care issues, with a focus on the economics of mental health, health care financing, and access to care, as well as methodological studies in support of the MEPS. He has published extensively in a wide range of peer-review journals including the Journal of Health Economics, Health Economics, Health Affairs, Health Services Research, Medical Care, JAMA Psychiatry, and Annals of Internal Medicine.  He received the 20th National Institute of Health Care Management Foundation Research Award in 2014 for research on risk adjustment.  He has also authored numerous book chapters and government monographs, as well as an article on empirical models of health care demand appearing in the Encyclopedia of Health Economics. 

Since joining AHRQ in 1995, Dr. Zuvekas has made extensive contributions to the design and operation of the MEPS Household and Medical Provider Components, including developing the expenditure estimation methodology.  Dr. Zuvekas received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was a NIMH National Research Service Award pre-doctoral fellow, and his B.A. from Cornell University.