Dorothy P. Rice

Dorothy P. Rice
Born	(1922-06-11)June 11, 1922 Brooklyn, New York
Died	February 25, 2017(2017-02-25) (aged 94)
Nationality	American
Education	Brooklyn College
Alma mater	University of Wisconsin–Madison
Known for	Numerous cost-of-illness studies
Awards	Association for Health Services Presidential Award for Leadership and Contribution to Health Services Research, American Public Health Association Sedgwick Memorial Medal, William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research
Scientific career
Fields	Health statistics
Institutions	National Center for Health Statistics

Dorothy P. Rice (June 11, 1922 – February 25, 2017) was an American health statistician whose work contributed to the creation of Medicare in the United States. Rice graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and began working with the US government soon after, but left the workforce to begin raising a child. Just over a decade later, she returned to government work with a position at the Social Security Administration, where she was one of the first scientists to study the economic cost of illness and exposed a lack of health insurance among the elderly.

Rice was later the director of the National Center for Health Statistics from 1976 to 1982, where she helped create the National Death Index. She finished her career at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was a Regents' lecturer and professor emeritus. During her time at the university, she co-authored a paper on the costs of smoking, which impacted ongoing legal negotiations between the US government and the US tobacco industry and contributed to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.