Robert M. Kaplan is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Services at the UCLA School of Public Health. He is also a Professor of Medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. He has been elected president of four different academic societies and has served as editor-in-chief for two major journals. Kaplan is the author or editor of 16 books and more than 400 articles or chapters. In 2005, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science.