Dr. Kazis is Professor of Health Policy and Management and Director of the Center for the Assessment of Pharmaceutical Practices (CAPP) at the Boston University School of Public Health. He is also Director of the Pharmaceutical Research Program at the Center for Health Quality, Outcomes and Economic Research at the Bedford VA Medical Center. He received his doctoral degree from Harvard University School of Public Health in 1980. Dr. Kazis joined the Veterans Health Administration in 1992 where he was recipient of the prestigious Research Career Scientist Award from the VA for almost a decade. Dr. Kazis has also been a special consultant to the Office of Quality and Performance in the VA where he was previously director of Functional Status for the Veterans Health Administration and principal investigator of the well known Veterans Health Study. He is the developer of the Veterans RAND 36 and 12 item health surveys (VR-36 and VR-12), formerly called the Veterans SF-36 and SF-12 (SF-36V and SF-12V) and developed from the MOS SF-36. From 1996 to 2007, close to four million administrations of these surveys has occurred both inside and outside the VA for purposes of monitoring patient outcomes of care. The VR-12 has now been adopted by the Veterans Health Administration for quality improvement purposes and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Studies (CMS) as part of its' national Health Outcomes Survey (HOS) for evaluating the Medicare Advantage Program. The VR-12 was included in 2006 as one of the HEDIS measures by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).  Dr. Kazis' research team was the recipient of the esteemed Peter Reizenstein Prize for the best paper published in the International Journal for Quality in Health Care in 2006.