Joanne Spetz is faculty at Healthforce Center at UCSF. She is director of the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF, where she also is the Brenda and Jeffrey L. Kang Presidential Chair in Health Care Finance. She is professor of health economics and finance in Family and Community Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine and the School of Nursing. Spetz’s research focuses on the economics of the health care workforce.

She directs the federally funded UCSF Health Workforce Research Center on Long-Term Care, which generates evidence to ensure an adequate workforce to provide patient-centered care to individuals with long-term care needs across the lifespan. She is an internationally known expert on the nursing workforce and leads studies of nurse supply, demand, education, earnings, and contributions to the quality of care across health care settings.

Spetz was a member of the Institute of Medicine Standing Committee on Credentialing Research in Nursing, a consultant to the Institute of Medicine Committee on the Future of Nursing, and a member of the National Commission on VA Nursing. She is an honorary fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. She frequently provides testimony and technical assistance to state and federal agencies and policymakers. Her teaching is in the areas of health economics, quantitative research methods, health care financial management, and health economics. In addition to teaching in the UCSF Master’s in Translational Medicine program, advising graduate students, and lecturing at UCSF and UC Berkeley, she has taught international courses in health workforce economics and planning.

Spetz received her doctorate in economics from Stanford University after studying economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.