University News

A University of Memphis professor, who served his faculty sabbatical at the Harvard School of Public Health, has recently received several notable honors. Dr. Albert Okunade, an economics professor in the Fogelman College of Business and Economics, has been nominated to receive the International Health Professional of the Year honor. This award is “made available to only a few illustrious individuals whose achievements and leadership stand out in the international medical community as decreed by the Research and Advisory Board,” according to the International Biographical Center of Cambridge, England.

Okunade recently was appointed to the board of trustees of the American Society of Health Economists (ASHE), a professional organization dedicated to promoting excellence in health economics research in the United States. ASHE serves as a forum for emerging ideas and empirical results of health economics research. Okunade is serving a multi-year term along with a distinguished group of health economists from leading U.S. academic institutions, including Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Michigan.

He also was selected to the Scientific Advisory Committee of The International Health Economics Association ( iHEA), the largest professional body of health economists in the world. He refereed paper proposals for the 5th Biennial iHEA World Congress, scheduled for July in Barcelona, Spain.

Okunade recently was elected secretary/treasurer of the African Finance and Economics Association (AFEA), a U.S. professional organization within the Allied Social Sciences Association (ASSA), in which the American Economic Association (AEA) also holds membership. At the January ASSA meetings in Philadelphia, Okunade presented a research paper and chaired a conference session. He also has refereed papers accepted for publication in economics and clinical medicine journals.

A graduate of Wright State University (BS, MS, MBA) and the University of Arkansas (PhD), Okunade joined the U of M in 1987 as an assistant professor. He was promoted to full professor in 1994. Okunade conducts research in health care finance and economics, nonprofit sector organizations and labor economics.

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