Dr. Traxler, an Austrian native, obtained his undergraduate and graduate (Magister) degrees in business administration in Vienna. He did one year of additional graduate work as a Fulbright Scholar in international affairs at The Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Bologna Center in Italy, and earned a doctorate in economics at Florida State University (Ph.D., 1978).

For most of the 1970s Dr. Traxler worked for the State of Florida as a planner/evaluator (1972-76), and as the chief of the State Health Planning and Development Agency's (SHPDA) data management branch (1976-79). He also did national (health planning assistance to other states) and international consulting (US AID Health Planning Team in Jordan) in the late 1970s. In 1979 Dr. Traxler was a visiting assistant professor in health services administration at Florida International University in Miami.

In 1979, Dr. Traxler accepted a call to join the join the federal government in Washington, DC and began a distinguished 22+ year career in directing and influencing health planning, health services research, and health workforce policy and research as a project/program officer, senior economist, and branch chief.

Building on his state-level efforts as an economist in the federal Bureau of Health Planning (1979-82), he then was an economist and project officer in the Cost and Financing Cluster of the National Center for Health Services Research (the current Agency for Health Care Research and Quality) from 1982 to 1989. Dr. Traxler joined the Bureau of Health Professions (BHPr) as a branch chief and supervisory economist in early 1989. He was responsible for national leadership in the analysis, modeling and forecasting of health personnel supply, distribution, and requirements. During his 12+ year tenure at BHPr, Dr. Traxler also was the Bureau’s focal point for technical assistance to States to advance health professions analysis, modeling and research in order to assist policy deliberations and decisions; some of these activities were in coordination and partnership with other agency bureaus (e.g., Primary Heath Care) and offices (e.g., rural health, ORHP). In addition, he held adjunct teaching appointments at the Uniformed Services University for the Health Sciences in Bethesda and at Saint Joseph’s University in Maine.

In 1994 Dr. Traxler became a senior economist in BHPr's newly created Workforce Analysis and Research Branch, which later became the National Center for Health Workforce Information and Analysis, NCHWIA. Initially he was responsible for the coordination of health professions (including medical) education research, including two national conferences and the three newly formed national Centers for Medical Education Research. Subsequently, as Program Officer he managed, coordinated, and interactively oversaw the four Centers for Health Workforce Studies, created as a new cooperative program, for which he prepared in 2001 the competitive procurement for a five-year new round encompassing five centers. In addition, he was Coordinating Editor for the Health Workforce NEWSLINK since its beginning in Summer 1995. He became the Editor for this quarterly national publication with the Fall 1998 issue of the NEWSLINK, which he remained until its last issue in Fall 2000.

As part of an agency-wide reorganization in late 2001 he was transferred to the BHPr Division of Medicine and Dentistry, where he was a senior staff member for the Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME) and a member of the Oral Health Team with program officer responsibilities. As lead staff for the COGME Graduate Medical Education (GME) Financing Workgroup, he actively participated in their deliberations, prepared their agenda (including content), and secured contractual follow-through.

Dr. Traxler is now a health systems consultant and teacher/lecturer, after early retirement from federal service (Bureau of Health Professions, Health Resources and Services Administration, US Dept. of Health and Human Services) on May 31, 2002. See also the web site www.traxlers.org for more detail.

Revised December 2002

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