Educator and policy analyst Dr. Ramón Castellblanch is an associate professor of health education at San Francisco State University. The courses he teaches focus on understanding the political environment in which public health operates, as well as media advocacy and economics as it applies to public health.

His areas of expertise include US health policies and politics, prescription drug policies, and grassroots politics. He has presented and written extensively about health policy and the politics of health and healthcare. He is currently finishing a book for Penn State University Press on the politics of prescription
drug access in the states of Maine, Vermont, and California. He earned his doctoral degree in health policy and management from Johns Hopkins University and his master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University.

In addition to his teaching responsibilities, he is a public member of the California Board of Pharmacy. He serves as the president of the San Francisco State University Chapter of California Faculty Association and actively advocates at the state and local levels on behalf of health care reform. Castellblanch has played an active role in working with consumer and labor
stakeholder groups, most recently promoting the development of an academic detailing program in California, where prescribers would be provided with nonbiased, evidenced-based information regarding the effectiveness of drugs they prescribe. In 2006, he designed and promoted California’s law (modeled after Maine Rx) that authorized state use of Medicaid purchasing power to
obtain lower prescription drug prices for low-income residents.