Karen E. Edison MD

Karen E. Edison, MD, is an academic dermatologist with expertise in health policy and telehealth. She served as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow and as majority health policy staff for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) from 1999 to 2001, where she was instrumental in the legislative expansion of Medicare reimbursement for telemedicine services.

Dr. Edison was a key member of the legislative team that drafted the reauthorization of the Community Health Center Programs and spent two years as key staff in a bipartisan coalition that developed the "Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act," which was signed into federal law in 2005.

Dr. Edison returned to Missouri in 2001. Her current titles include Philip C. Anderson Professor and chair of the Department of Dermatology, medical director of the Missouri Telehealth Network, and director of the Center for Health Policy (CHP) at the University of Missouri in Columbia. As director of the CHP she has helped to lead work on health insurance access, telemedicine, health information technology adoption, health information exchange, and MO HealthNet (Medicaid) data analysis, and she has worked to improve health equity and ensure adequate health literacy for all Missourians.

Dr. Edison received BS and BA degrees from William Jewell College and her MD degree from the University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, where she also did her residency in dermatology.