Dr. Pagán is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy at the School of Public Health, University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth. Dr. Pagán is also Adjunct Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from The University of New Mexico in 1995.

His research work centers on the effects of uninsurance on health care access and quality in local health care markets. In 2007 he and Dr. Dominick Frosch received an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to study the effects of direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs on health behaviors.

Dr. Pagán was Professor of Economics and Director of the Institute for Population Health Policy at the University of Texas-Pan American (2005-2009). He was a also a Fulbright Scholar in Mexico (1999) and an RWJF Health & Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania (2003-2005).

He is a member of the National Advisory Committee of RWJF's Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative. He is also a member of RWJF's Roundtable on Health and Health Care, a new initiative of the RWJF Alumni Network focusing on implementing health care reform.