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Humphrey Taylor is the Chairman of the Harris Poll, a service of Harris Interactive. Each year, Mr. Taylor directs many surveys of health care consumers, taxpayers, physicians and other providers, employers and legislators on a broad range of health care issues including satisfaction, access, quality, cost and cost-containment policies, managed care, practice patterns and the role of government in the U.S.A. and other countries. The Harris firm's clients include over 80 health care companies, government agencies and foundations. He writes and speaks frequently about the forces transforming the nation's health care system, and on differences between our system and those in Canada, Western Europe and Japan. He has been listed as one of the nation's most influential health care policy leaders since the 1991 edition of the "Health Care 500." The Harris firm conducts epidemiological research for federal government agencies and universities, studies of the future of medical education, medical practice, Medicaid and HMOs, and health care research conducted in more than 30 countries. The Harris firm's health care clients include many pharmaceutical and health insurance companies, many hospitals, the U.S. Air Force, the Center for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Mental Health and Aging, the Veterans Administration, the Robert Wood Johnson, Commonwealth Fund, Hartford, and the Kaiser Family Foundations, and many medical schools and schools of public health. Mr. Taylor has a remarkable track record in predicting election results with great accuracy. In 1970 his British company, in its first election, was the only one of six national polls to predict correctly the Conservative victory. In the 1992, 1996 and 2000 U.S. presidential elections, the Harris Poll under Mr. Taylor's leadership accurately predicted the share of the vote won by the major candidates. (Harris was the most accurate of all the polls in 2000 and 1992.) One person who seems to think well of Humphrey is Sen. Jay Rockefeller. "To say 'Humphrey Taylor is a pollster' is like saying 'Michelangelo does ceilings,'" Rockefeller said at a health care briefing in Washington. Among his other achievements: Author of the chapters on opinion polls in the leading professional books on marketing research in both U.S. and Europe (ESOMAR and AMA). Twice winner of the Market Research Society's silver medal for the "best paper" published (in 1997 and 2000). Conceived and managed the world's first daily tracking polls (for the Conservative Party in Britain) in 1970. Conceived and managed the world's first joint newspaper and TV poll -- The (London) Times/ITN poll, 1972. Designed and managed Britain's first exit polls (for ITN), 1971. First non-physician to be a trustee of a medical society (certainly in the U.S., possibly in the world). Mr. Taylor was born in Iran and has lived in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Britain, and the U.S.A. He grew up and was educated in Britain. Nine family members, including both his parents, are or were physicians. Mr. Taylor graduated from Cambridge in 1958 in Mathematics and Social Anthropology. He then worked for the Government of Tanzania (where he reared a leopard), both before and after independence, where he served as a District Officer and Magistrate. After working for 5 months in Paraguay in 1962-63, Mr. Taylor returned to England and began working in survey research with a leading British firm. In 1966, Mr. Taylor founded his own company in Britain. While there, he conducted all of the private political polling for the Conservative Party and was an advisor to Prime Minister Edward Heath and, subsequently, to Margaret Thatcher. He also conducted surveys for most of the largest British companies. In 1970, his company was acquired by Louis Harris & Associates. In 1976, he moved to New York as Chief Operating Officer of Louis Harris & Associates. He was appointed President in 1981, C.E.O. in 1992 and Chairman in 1994. Mr. Taylor has had overall responsibility for over 8,000 surveys and has personally directed many hundreds of surveys in more than 80 countries for governments, corporations and foundations. He has testified to Congressional Committees and Subcommittees on Social Security, health care cost containment, Medicare, aging, policies affecting disabled people, drug exports, the taxation of employee benefits and privacy. He has made presentations in the White House and on Capitol Hill on these subjects, and on Health Maintenance Organizations, productivity, consumerism, health promotion and disease prevention. He writes a syndicated weekly column. He has written editorial page articles for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and (London) Times. He has been a guest lecturer at Harvard (the Kennedy School and the School of Public Health), Oxford, NYU and U.C.S.F. Mr. Taylor was Chairman of the Board of the American Health Foundation for 6 years. He is Chairman of the National Council on Public Polls, a trustee of the Roper Center, the Royal Society of Medicine Foundation, Inc., the National Organization on Disability and the American Academy of Ophthalmology (he was recently elected an Honorary Fellow). He is a member of the Advisory Committee for the National Academy of Sciences Office on Public Understanding of Science, and serves on the Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME). |
