Peter J. Cunningham

Peter J. Cunningham, Ph.D., is a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. Formerly a senior fellow at the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC), he has been extensively involved in the design, planning, management, and analysis of the Community Tracking Study (CTS), a large nationally representative and longitudinal study of the U.S. health care system funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  His main areas of interest include trends in public and private health care coverage, access to medical care for the uninsured, the effects of high medical bills and costs on access, physician charity care, and the viability of the health care safety net. He has published extensively in medical and health services research journals, including JAMA, Health Affairs, Health Services Research, Inquiry, Medical Care, and Medical Care Research and Review. Prior to joining HSC in 1995, Dr. Cunningham was a researcher at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality). While there, he was extensively involved in the design and analysis of the National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES). Dr. Cunningham received his Ph.D. in medical sociology and health services research from Purdue University in 1988.