Victor Roy, MD, PhD, is a family physician and sociologist whose work advances health through research, clinical care, and partnerships. He is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Pennsylvania.
Roy investigates how economic systems shape health for marginalized patients, with a focus on how finance and governance affect access to essential resources—such as medicines and economic security. He is collaborating with Yale researchers to study the impact of the nation’s first statewide Baby Bonds program—launched in Connecticut in 2023—on young families’ health, wellbeing, and sense of inclusion. Together with colleagues at the New School’s Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, he is developing the Health and Political Economy Project, an initiative to build a more just and inclusive economy that advances health and dignity.
His book, Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines (University of California Press, 2023), examines the political economy of drug pricing and access through the case of curative treatments for hepatitis C. Roy’s writing and scholarship have also appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA Internal Medicine, USA Today, and The Guardian.
He practices clinically in outpatient and hospital settings in West Philadelphia and is the grandson of a physician and a village health worker from rural West Bengal, India. Alongside his medical degree from Northwestern University as a Paul and Daisy Soros New American Fellow, he earned a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge scholar and completed post-doctoral training in health services research from Yale National Clinician Scholars Program.