Dan Dohan is Professor of Health Policy and Social Medicine at UCSF. His primary campus home is the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS) where he serves as Deputy Director as well as Associate Director for Training. He also serves as co-Director of the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science, and Health Policy.

Dan’s research focuses broadly on the culture of medicine. He leads a project to develop innovative methods to integrate qualitative and narrative data into clinical decision-making and patient-centered outcomes research. In collaboration with the CTSI and campus’ precision medicine initiative, he is developing stakeholder-engaged approaches for educating patients about precision medicine and to support their involvement in precision medicine research. He is collaborating with the UCSF Center for Surgery in Older Adults on ways to better align surgical treatment decision-making with frail elders’ overall goals of care. Finally, he is examining the ethical and social implications of close-looped brain stimulation, newly-developed technologies that record, interpret, and intervene in brain activity associated with syndromes such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, and mood disorder.

Dan is also active as an educator. He co-Directs the Masters of Science degree program in Health Policy and Law (HPL). Launched in August 2016, the HPL is an online degree jointly offered by UCSF and UC Hastings College of Law in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Resource Center for Online Education. In the School of Medicine, Dan has been involved in the development of the innovative Bridges curriculum. He serves as one of the Directors of the Health and Society Block, which exposes first year medical students to foundational science in the areas of health determinants, health disparities, and health policy. Finally, Dan directs IHPS’ post-doctoral research training program.

Dan received his PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley. A book based on his dissertation, The Price of Poverty: Money, Work, and Culture in the Mexican-American Barrio, was published by the University of California Press in 2003.