Ye brings global health policy lens to UK College of Pharmacy
LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 6, 2026) — The University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy announced that Ziping Ye, Ph.D., has joined the Department of Pharmacy Practice and Science as a tenure-track assistant professor effective June 1.
Ye comes to UK from Stanford University, where she served as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Health Policy. Her research examines how pharmacy-based models of care, substance use treatment programs and health policies perform in real-world settings with particular attention to clinical, patient-centered, economic and system-level outcomes. Grounded in health economics, pharmacoeconomics, epidemiology and policy analysis, her work draws on real-world evidence and community-engaged research methods to generate actionable evidence for pharmacy practice and policy implementation.
At Stanford, Ye led a long-standing community-engaged research collaboration with California Correctional Health Care Services to optimize hepatitis C testing and treatment programs in state prisons and conducted research on the effects of Affordable Care Act preventive care provisions on access, utilization and equity. At UK, she plans to build a research program focused on expanding access to opioid use disorder and hepatitis C care in rural and underserved communities, particularly in Appalachian Kentucky. Her work will emphasize scalable care models in community-based settings, such as community pharmacies, using mixed-methods research, Medicaid claims data, simulation modeling, and community partnerships to inform implementation.
Ye holds a doctorate and a master's degree in pharmacy administration from Shenyang Pharmaceutical University and a bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical engineering from Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications on patient-reported outcomes, willingness-to-pay for quality-adjusted life years and health technology assessment. Ye has taught courses in health economics, survey methodology and public administration. She also founded the Pharmacoeconomics Group, an international professional learning community with more than 150 members.
Ye was recently named a recipient of the 2026 ASHEcon Program Chair Award from the American Society of Health Economists in the Health Systems and Health Care Financing program area for the abstract "The Stability of the Healthcare Safety Net: Evidence from Generic Drug Entry," co-authored with Sarah Kotb and Amanda Su. The award, presented annually at the ASHEcon conference, recognizes an exceptional abstract in each conference program area. She was also selected for the CPDD Travel Award for Early Career Investigators from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, supporting her participation in the CPDD Annual Scientific Meeting. In addition, she was selected to participate in the Emerging Engagement Scholars Workshop, a competitive professional development program for early-career scholars engaged in community-engaged research.
"Dr. Ye's work sits exactly where pharmacy practice needs to go: into communities and into the policy conversations that determine whether good ideas actually reach patients," said Craig Martin, PharmD, MBA, interim dean. "Her experience building pharmacy-based solutions for substance use treatment will strengthen our efforts to expand access to care across Kentucky, and we are thrilled to have her join our faculty."
"I am honored and excited to join the UK College of Pharmacy," Ye said. "The need for expanded access to substance use and hepatitis C treatment is real, and so is the opportunity to do something about it through pharmacies," Ye said. "I want my research to start in the communities and pharmacies it's meant to serve, and I'm looking forward to learning from my colleagues and students to build pathways that change how care reaches people."