Rate My Professor Julie Zissimopoulos

Dr. Zissimopoulos is Co-Director of the Aging and Cognition Program at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and Principal Investigator and Director of two National Institute on Aging-funded centers: the USC Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias Resource Center for Minority Aging Research and the Center for Advancing Sociodemographic and Economic Study of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias. Her research examines the economic costs of dementia, impacts of dementia on care partners, use and response to drug therapies for conditions influencing dementia risk, racial and ethnic disparities in dementia diagnosis and health care, and population measures of dementia using Medicare claims and survey data. Notable publications include "Role of PCPs in Diagnosing Dementia in Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage" (Haye, Jacobson, and Zissimopoulos, 2025, Alzheimer’s & Dementia); "Dementia Severity at Incident Diagnosis in a Population Representative Sample of Older Americans" (Xu et al., 2024, Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research and Clinical Interventions); and "After Risk-Adjustment Change, Dementia Diagnoses Increased In Medicare Advantage Relative To Traditional Medicare" (Haye et al., 2025, Health Affairs). She has received the USC Price School High Impact Research Award in 2024, multiple USC Price Gold Research Awards, and serves as Lead Editor for the Health Policy and Caregiving Section of Alzheimer’s & Dementia. Dr. Zissimopoulos has co-chaired the National Research Summit on Care, Services, and Supports for Persons Living with Dementia and participated in National Academies committees on dementia research priorities.