William Padula

Padula, in collaboration with Hopkins colleagues Jerry Anderson, Jeremy Greene, and Vincent DeMarco drafted legislation to place checks and balances on skyrocketing prices of pharmaceuticals. This policy, known as Maryland's Anti-Price-Gouging Law was an effort to prevent bad actors such as Martin Shkreli from arbitrarily raising the prices of drugs without consideration for consumer affordability. The Anti-Price-Gouging legislation was passed bipartisan by the State of Maryland in April, 2017, and Padula and Greene published a correspondence on the legislation in the New England Journal of Medicine.[6] This legislation would set the stage for the later introduction of the Maryland Prescription Drug Affordability Board. Padula was later recognized for these contributions with the Award for Excellence in U.S. Public Health Practice from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

In 2019, Padula and Joyce Black authored the Standardized Pressure Injury Prevention Protocol checklist, which was the first derivative of the International Guideline for pressure ulcer prevention that could be implemented simply at the bedside.[7]

Padula served as president and chief executive officer of the National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel from 2021 to 2022. During which time he helped introduce the concept of an Standardized Pressure Injury Prevention Protocol checklist to United States Congress, which later passed legislation updating the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015 (H.R. 4355) to establish the checklist as law that United States Department of Veterans Affairs facilities should adhere to in order to keep patients safe from harm.

In 2022, Padula and Peter Pronovost introduced the application of health technology assessment to calculate defects in value for specialty care in the U.S. health system.[8] This work calculated that compared to the $1.4 trillion spent on defects in value, it would only cost 20% on quality improvement through centers of excellence to eliminate these defects.

He has long advocated the cost-effectiveness of vaccines as efficient solutions to reduce disease burden. He has taught vaccine economics courses with grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since 2017 in Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. In 2023, Padula, along with colleagues David Bishai and Logan Brenzel, published the first textbook on vaccine economics through Oxford University Press, which is the first open-access textbook it published with support from the foundation.[9]