Carol M. Ashton, MD, MPH

Dr. Carol Ashton joined Houston Methodist Hospital in 2008. Prior to that time, she held faculty positions at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Her research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Veterans Health Administration Research and Development Service, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. While at Baylor, she helped establish a highly productive center of excellence in health services research and served as its director from 1998 to 2006. This center was funded by the Veterans Health Administration.

In 2004, Dr. Ashton received the VA Under-Secretary for Health’s Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Health Services Research. She has served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Medical Care, one of the nation’s top-tier health services research journals, and has served on numerous federal and nonfederal grant application review panels. Along with co-author Nelda P. Wray, Dr. Ashton has recently completed a book titled “Comparative Effectiveness Research: Evidence, Policy, and Interests,” published by Oxford University Press in 2013.

Dr. Ashton studies health services research. She has an extensive record of scholarship in the field related to topics such as access to care, assessment of patterns and outcomes of care, and comparative effectiveness in evaluation of new technologies and procedures.