Mark Peterson receives inaugural APSA Career Achievement Award in Health Politics and Policy

Mark Peterson, UCLA professor of public policy, political science, health policy and management, and law; and a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, has received the inaugural Career Achievement Award from the Health Politics and Policy Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA).

The award was presented by Julianna Pacheco, outgoing section president, during APSA’s annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada, on Sept. 12, 2025. 

The award recognizes Peterson’s decades-long contributions to understanding and shaping health policy, his mentorship of younger scholars and his enduring impact on both the field and public life. 

“Receiving this inaugural Career Achievement Award from the Health Politics and Policy Section of the American Political Science Association was an unexpected honor,” Peterson said. “As I said to my colleagues in the (Health Politics and Policy) Section, now populated by subsequent generations of scores of younger and innovative scholars, it has been exciting to participate in and watch the emergence of the study (of) health politics and policy making, and its real-world influence, become so prominent in the discipline of political science.”  

Peterson, who is part of UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and Fielding School of Public Health, is a leading scholar on American national institutions. He has focused much of his research on the presidency, Congress, interest groups and public opinion, with particular attention to health care policy, Medicare reform and HIV/AIDS politics. He has authored numerous influential works, including “Legislating Together: The White House and Capitol Hill from Eisenhower to Reagan,” and co-edited volumes for the Annenberg Institutions of American Democracy Project, one of which received APSA’s Richard E. Neustadt Award.

Beyond scholarship, Peterson has shaped policy through advisory roles in Congress and California state agencies, contributed to the Blue Sky Health Initiative, and guided health care reform efforts, including the Affordable Care Act.