Since its founding in the Fall of 1987, he has served as Director of the Center for Public Policy and Contemporary Issues at the University of Denver. His research and teaching focus has been on the dysfunctional nature of American institutions, with special emphasis on health care system reform and allocation of health care resources.

Lamm was selected one of Time Magazine's "200 Young Leaders of America" in 1974, and won the Christian Science Monitor "Peace 2020" essay competition in 1985. In 1992, he was honored by the Denver Post and Historic Denver, Inc. as one of the "Colorado 100"—people who have made significant contributions to Colorado and made lasting impressions on the state's history. In 1993, Lamm received the "Humanist of the Year" award from the American Humanist Association. Presently, he is serving as Chairman for the Pew Health Professions Commission, and as the public member for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

Richard Lamm is one of a new breed of policy analysts who argues that the challenge of the 1990s is to meet new public needs with ever more limited resources. Public policy, he maintains, "cannot count on historic revenue growth and, thus, cannot chase geometric curves of public spending." Lamm moves beyond traditional liberalism and conservatism to urge that the task before us is "to reconceptualize much of what government does and how it does it."

Richard Lamm has always been on the cutting edge of political change. As a freshman legislator, he drafted and succeeded in passing the nation's first liberalized abortion law. He was an early leader of the environmental movement. Reacting to the high cost of campaigning, he walked the state in his campaign for Governor of Colorado. He is the longest-serving governor in Colorado's history. While Governor, he authored or co-authored five books.

He is now Director at the Center for Public Policy and Contemporary Issues at the University of Denver, and continues to write provocative and far-sighted monographs and articles.