Pinar Karaca-Mandic is a University of Minnesota Distinguished McKnight University Professor. She is also the C. Arthur Williams Jr. Professor in Healthcare Risk Management in the Department of Finance, and the Founding Director of the Business Advancement Center for Health (BACH). Prior to that, she served as the Academic Director of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute (MILI) from 2017 to 2021.
She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), in Health Economics and Healthcare programs. She also serves as an Associate Editor of Forum for Health Economics and Policy, and an Editorial Board Member for the International Journal of Health Economics and Management.
Dr. Karaca-Mandic has over 135 manuscripts in leading economics, medical and health policy journals as well as book chapters and policy briefs. Her work has been published in the Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Risk and Insurance, Journal of Health Economics, Health Economics, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and JAMA specialty journals, British Medical Journal, Health Services Research and Health Affairs, among others. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, American Cancer Society, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She is currently working on a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to design and evaluate a novel financial instrument to establish sustainable funding for targeting social drivers of health such as housing and food insecurity. Most recently, she was awarded a multi-year grant by the AHRQ to study COVID-19 related medications prescribing.
She co-founded the University of Minnesota COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking project in March 2020 in an effort to collect and disseminate daily data on COVID-19 hospitalizations, ICU and ventilator use across all U.S. states and sub-state geographies. The project has produced 8 peer-reviewed publications, including 4 in JAMA journals, over 50 briefs/posts/key insights and extensive media mentions. The project has received 4 national recognitions including as a 2021 Innovation That Inspires from AACSB , two Silver Stevie Awards for the “Most Valuable Non-Profit Response” and “Most Valuable Service” from the American Business Awards, and was a finalist for the NIHCM Digital Media Award. For her work on the project, Dr. Karaca-Mandic received the 2021 Women’s Health Leadership Trust award for Community Engagement.
Prior to joining the Carlson School faculty, Karaca-Mandic was Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from University of California at Berkeley, and BA in economics and mathematics (high honors), and a concentration in public policy from Swarthmore College.