Joseph Zickafoose

Joseph Zickafoose is a practicing primary care pediatrician whose research focuses on health care services for children, Medicaid policy, and the intersections between them. He is the director of the Center on Health Care Effectiveness at Mathematica.

Zickafoose has led and contributed to the mixed-methods evaluations of many key federal programs promoting innovation and quality in health care for children, including the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (CHIPRA) Quality Demonstration Grant Program and multiple projects in two rounds of the Center for Medicaid and Medicaid Innovation’s Health Care Innovation Awards. Beginning in 2020, he directs a project supporting the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS) within the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in the development of a strategy to review access to care in state Medicaid programs while reducing burden on state Medicaid agencies. He also serves as a federal court appointed monitor to assess implementation of an order mandating the District of Columbia’s Department of Health to improve the services of the Medicaid Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment (EPSDT) program. In addition to this work, Zickafoose has directed projects for the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC), led multiple studies on health care access and delivery for children with special health care needs in the military health system, studied the effects of CHIP on access to and use of health care services for children, and served as the principle investigator of the evaluation of the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative.

Before joining Mathematica in 2012, Zickafoose was a research fellow at the University of Michigan, and worked as a pediatric resident, chief resident, and staff pediatrician at the Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. Since joining Mathematica, he has continued to practice as a primary care pediatrician, currently at Vanderbilt University Medical Center serving a multi-ethnic population of children primarily covered by Medicaid in Nashville, Tennessee. He holds an M.D. from Case Western Reserve University and an M.S. in health and health care research from the University of Michigan. He is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics.