Deborah Peikes, PhD, MPA

Deborah Peikes brings technical and substantive expertise in studying how to improve the delivery of primary care through the patient-centered medical home and related models of care; the effectiveness of care coordination and disease management for people with chronic illnesses; and the health, employment, and social integration of beneficiaries with severe disabilities.

Peikes currently serves as the project director and/or principal investigator of a large initiative to improve the performance of 500 primary care practices for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and a study of medical homes for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She has conducted studies of health policies and programs for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Medicare Chronic Care Practice Research Network, Aetna, United, the United Auto Workers, and the Health Resources and Services Administration. She has also played a lead role in evaluating the effect of health care and employment supports provided by the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) to beneficiaries with disabilities. For one of those projects,  she directed an evaluation of the SSA-funded State Partnership Initiative, which tested employment supports and benefits counseling in 12 states.

Peikes was the first author of an article on the effects of care coordination on Medicare beneficiaries in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and has written on and spoken widely about primary care, care coordination, and disability policy. The JAMA article was awarded Best Paper by both AcademyHealth and the National Institute for Health Care Management.

Peikes has taught a graduate class on program evaluation at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She holds an M.P.A. in economic policy and a Ph.D. in public policy from Princeton University, and she was a Fulbright Scholar.