Alvin R. Tarlov, M.D. received a bachelor’s degree at Dartmouth College and a medical degree from the University of Chicago. Dr. Tarlov’s internship in Internal Medicine was at the Philadelphia General Hospital. He completed his residency at the University of Chicago after which he spent five years in hematologic research at the University of Chicago and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Tarlov served as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago from 1968 to 1981. In 1975, he began a five-year term as Chairman of the Task Force on Manpower Needs of the Association of Professors of Medicine. In 1978, the Secretary of the DHEW appointed Dr. Tarlov chairman of the Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee to advise the Secretary on the most desirable number, specialty distribution and geographic placement of physicians in each specialty. GMENAC’s report was issued in 1980.

Dr. Tarlov is a former Markle Foundation Scholar and NIH Research Career Development Awardee. He has served as Secretary-Treasurer and as President of the Association of Professors of Medicine, and as Chairman of the Federated Council for Internal Medicine. He was elected to membership in the Association of American Physicians and to the Institute of Medicine. He chaired the IOM Committee on a National Agenda for the Prevention of Disabilities. He was selected a Master of the American College of Physicians. In January 1984, Dr. Tarlov became President of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation where he directed the Foundation’s national program on community-based health education and disease prevention. In 1990, he became Professor of Medicine at Tufts University and Professor of Health Promotion at the Harvard School of Public Health. At Tufts he became Director of The Health Institute at the New England Medical Center, devoted to research on the outcomes of medical care and on the relationship of societal characteristics to population health. At Harvard he was Chairman of the Mind/Brain/Behavior Society and Health Interfaculty Initiative. From 1993 to 2000, he founded and served as President of the Medical Outcomes Trust; from 1994 through 1998 he served as Chairman of the Board and President of the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium, Inc. In 1992, Dr. Tarlov received from the Society for General Internal Medicine the Robert Glaser Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Advancement of General Internal Medicine. He was named "Distinguished Internist of 1997" by the American Society of Internal Medicine. In May 2000, he was made an Honorary Fellow of University College London.

From September 1999 until July 2005, Dr. Tarlov served as Director of the multi-university Texas Program for Society and Health in Houston, Texas, where he also was Professor in the University of Texas School of Public Health and Sid Richardson and Taylor and Robert H. Ray Senior Fellow in Health Policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Rice University. He now resides in Chicago, Illinois.