*Alyce Sophia Adams, MPP, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Adams also serves on the Faculty Advisory Board for the Harvard University Native American Program. Her research focuses on disparities in pharmaceutical access and use among people with chronic illness and disability. Her most recent publications have examined the impact of cost sharing and patient race on under use of clinically essential medications and other health services.
Margarita Alegría, PhD, is Director, Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research (CMMHR), Cambridge Health Alliance and Professor of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. Alegría is currently the Principal Investigator of two NIMH-funded research studies—The Latino Research Program Project (LRPP), a collaborative research partnership to improve the mental health care of Latino populations, and the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS, Takeuchi and Alegría, PIs), a large epidemiologic national study to estimate mental health disorders for Asians and Latinos. Her published work focuses on mental health care and substance abuse services in minority populations, conceptual and methodological issues with minority populations, risk behaviors, and disparities in service delivery.
Arthur
Applbaum, PhD, is Professor of Ethics and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Director of Graduate Fellowships, Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Harvard University. Applbaum’s work on legitimate political authority, civil and official disobedience, and role morality has appeared in journals such as Philosophy & Public Affairs, Harvard Law Review, Ethics, and Legal Theory. He is the author of Ethics for Adversaries, a book about the morality of roles in public and professional life. Applbaum has written about the ethics of executioners and of butlers, and he has consulted to the government about the ethics of spies.
Christopher N. Avery, PhD, is Roy E. Larsen Professor of Public Policy, teaches analytic courses in microeconomics and statistics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He studies rating and selection mechanisms, focusing on the college admissions system. His first book, The Early Admissions Game, coauthored with Andrew Fairbanks and Richard
Zeckhauser, was published by Harvard University Press in March 2003. In his current research, he studies college application patterns and college enrollment choices for high school students.
Jerry
Avorn, MD, is Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Chief, Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Brigham and Women's Hospital. An internist, geriatrician, and pharmaco-epidemiologist, his research centers on medication use, with particular reference to elderly patients and chronic disease. Topics of particular interest include: scientific, policy, and social determinants of physician prescribing practices; efficacy and effectiveness of specific medications; compliance by patients with prescribed regimens; methods to improve the appropriateness of drug prescribing and drug taking; quantification of risks and benefits of drugs; and pharmaceutical cost-effectiveness analysis. Dr. Avorn is also director of the Program for the Analysis of Clinical Strategies, a research unit with faculty and staff representing the disciplines of epidemiology, internal medicine, health services research, psychiatry, and biostatistics.
John
Z. Ayanian MD, MPP, is Associate Professor of Medicine and of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, and Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Ayanian’s research interests focus on access to care and quality of care for major chronic conditions in adults, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and end-stage renal disease. His studies assess the relation of socio-demographic factors – including gender, race, and socio-economic status – to the process and outcomes of health care and the effect of physician and organizational characteristics on the quality of health care. He also directs the General Internal Medicine Fellowship Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is a deputy editor of the journal, Medical Care.
*Katherine Baicker, PhD, is Professor of Health Economics, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Baicker’s research areas include health economics, welfare, and public finance, with a particular focus on the financing of health insurance, spending on public programs, and fiscal federalism. She recently served as a Member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, where she focused on the development and analysis of health policy.
Julie Battilana, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. Her research interests include institutional entrepreneurship, the role played by individuals in institutional and organizational change, interactions between organizations and their institutional environment, interactions between firms and public authorities, political strategies implemented by firms, and cooperation between not-for-profit organizations.
Lisa
F. Berkman, MS, PhD, is Chair of the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, and Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy, Harvard School of Public Health. She is a social epidemiologist whose research is focused on understanding the social determinants of health, particularly among the elderly. She has been involved in several large cohort studies of the elderly and has recently started several clinical trials of patients with cerebrovascular and cardiovascular disease.
Ernst Berndt, PhD, is Louis B. Seley Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Current research interests include a cross-country study of factors affecting differential rates of diffusion of new medicines in various types of health care systems, the effects of medical journal and physician detailing on the commercial success of various generations of gastrointestinal medicines, and the impact of mental health disorders on the subsequent labor market and retirement behavior of middle-aged employees. Professor Berndt is also Director of the National
Bureau of Economic Research Program on Technological Progress and Productivity Measurement.
Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, is Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; Professor of Health Care Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School; and Professor of Health Policy and Management, Department of Heath Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. He is also President and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of health care systems through education, research, and demonstration projects, and through fostering collaboration among health care organizations and their leaders. His major research interests include quality of health care, decision theory, cost-effectiveness analysis, health care policy, clinical pediatrics, and preventive medicine.
*Robert J. Blendon, MBA, ScD, is Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis, Harvard School of Public Health and John F. Kennedy School of Government. Blendon is best known for his research on public opinion and health policy; he has pioneered in studies of comparative public opinion. Blendon directs the Harvard Program on Public Opinion and Health and Social Policy, which focuses on the roles public opinion and leadership opinions play in the formation of our nation’s domestic agenda.
*David Bloom, PhD, is Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography and Chair, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. Bloom’s current research interests include labor economics, health, demography, and the environment. He has written extensively on the linkages between health status and economic growth; the effects of population change on economic development; the determinants of wages, fringe benefits, and total family income; the adjudication of labor disputes; the measurement of discrimination; the emerging world labor market; the effects of rapid population growth; the economics of municipal solid waste; the sociology and economics of marriage and fertility; and the global spread and economic impacts of HIV and AIDS.
David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, is Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Professor of Health Care Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School; Director, Institute for Health Policy, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH); and Physician, MGH. His major research interests include: the effects of markets and other environmental factors on the behavior of health care organizations and physicians, including academic health centers; academic industry relationships; quality management in health care; and the politics of healthcare.
Richard Bohmer, MD, MPH, is MBA Class of 1973 Senior Lecturer of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. His research interests focus on the management of the process of medical care and the adoption of new technologies into medicine. He has recently completed a study of the management of surgeon and team learning in the adoption of a new surgical technology. Along with Professor Regina Herzlinger, he co-teaches an elective course entitled “Managing Innovation in Health Care.”
H. Kent Bowen, PhD, is Baker Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School. He has served as course head for the required first-year MBA course, Technology and Operations Management, two advanced level courses, Running and Growing the Small Company, The Operating Manager, and Commercializing Science and High Technology. Bowen’s current research focuses on managing technology-based enterprises: (1) managing science-based organizations; (2) a framework for the operations manager as leader, learner and teacher, and (3) principles for rapid learning in operations and technology management.
*Allan M. Brandt, PhD, is Professor of the History of Science, Department of the History of Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School. His work focuses on social and ethical aspects of health, disease, and medical practices in the twentieth-century United States. Brandt is the author of The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America and No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880. He has written on the social history of epidemic disease; the history of public health; and the history of human subject research among other topics.
Dan W. Brock, PhD, is Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Medical Ethics, Department of Social Medicine, and Director of the Division of Medical Ethics, Harvard Medical School. His current research focuses on ethical issues in health care resource prioritization and allocation, with special concentration on cost-effectiveness, and on ethical issues in genetic selection, both to avoid disabilities and to enhance normal function.
Joan
Buchanan, PhD, is Lecturer on Health Care Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. Buchanan is the principal investigator of “Assessment Instruments for PPS,” sponsored by the Health Care Financing Administration, that evaluates the use of the Minimum Data Set for Post Acute Care for use in classifying patients for payment in inpatient rehabilitation hospital settings. The study will collect data on 2000Medicare patients in 50 hospitals. Study findings will inform the design and implementation of the planned Medicare prospective payment system for inpatient rehabilitation.
Andrea Louise Campbell, PhD, is Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, MIT. Campbell's teaching and research interests include American politics, public opinion, political behavior, political inequality, and social policy. Her work has examined the interrelationships between public policy and mass political behavior, the political implications of Medicare’s design, and the politics of long-term care. From 2001-2003, Campbell was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy at Yale University.
David
Canning, PhD, is Professor of Economics and International Health, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. Professor Canning's research focuses on the role of demographic change and health improvements in economic development.
*Daniel P. Carpenter, PhD, is Professor of Government, Department of Government, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. His health policy interests are government regulation of pharmaceuticals (FDA and worldwide), public attention to disease, network analysis of health policy lobbies and policymaking, historical development of pharmaceutical markets and regulatory institutions, and the impact of placebo effects upon learning in markets for health care. He is faculty chair of the Harvard Undergraduate Certificate Program in Health Policy.
Amitabh
Chandra, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the IZA Institute in Bonn, Germany, and at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His current research focuses on the effect of Title VII of the Civil Rights Acton labor markets, the role of medical malpractice litigation on the delivery of health care, and the economics of neonatal health and cardiovascular care.
*Michael Chernew, PhD, is Professor of Health Care Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. One major area of Chernew’s research focuses on assessing the impact of managed care on the health care marketplace, with an emphasis on examining the impact of managed care on health care cost growth and on the use of medical technology. Other research has examined determinants of patient choice of hospital and the impact of health plan performance measures on employee and employer selection of health plans. He has served on the Commonwealth’s Foundation Commission on a higher performing health system, and on technical advisory panels for the Health Care Financing Administration that reviewed the assumptions used by the Medicare actuaries to assess the financial status of the Medicare trust funds. He is a former recipient of the John D. Thompson Prize for Young Investigators and the Alice S. Hersh Young Investigator Award.
Niteesh K. Choudhry, MD, PhD, is Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School, and Associate Physician, Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics and the Hospitalist Program, Brigham and Women's Hospital. Choudry’s research deals with the appropriate use of therapies for common adult medical problems such heart disease, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes, and he is currently conducing several randomized interventions to improve medication adherence. He practices inpatient general internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and is actively involved in resident education.
*Nicholas
A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH
, is Professor of Medical Sociology, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School; Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; and an attending physician in the Department of Medicine at the Harvard-affiliated Mt. Auburn Hospital. Christakis’ research interests have focused on ways to enhance the care of terminally ill patients, including work on clinical and socioeconomic factors that influence the timing of the transition from curative to palliative care and work on whether and how physicians formulate and communicate prognoses (e.g., in his book, *Norman Daniels, PhD, is Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. His research is on justice and health policy, with particular emphasis on the distribution of health care resources and fair process in such decisions, fairness in the design of health systems and health reforms, and equity in population health.
*Amy Edmondson, PhD, is Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School. Edmondson’s research examines leadership influences on learning, collaboration and innovation in teams and organizations. Her field-based approach includes research in contexts ranging from health care delivery and manufacturing to space exploration. One stream of her work has shown effects of leadership behavior and a safe psychological climate on patient safety in hospitals. Another stream investigates management team practices that promote effective decision-making. She also has studied leadership enablers of organizational learning, more generally.
Einer R. Elhauge,
JD, is Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. His research interests include statutory interpretation, legislative term limits, the 2000 Presidential election, the implications of interest group theory for judicial review, antitrust petitioning and state action immunity, sacrificing corporate profits in the public interest, corporate sale of control doctrine, antitrust monopolization and tying doctrine, whether lawyers improve the legal system, and how to devise a morally just and cost effective medical system.
*Arnold
M. Epstein, MD, MA, is John H. Foster Professor of Health Policy and Management and Chair, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. Epstein’s research interests focus on access and quality of care especially for disadvantaged populations. He is best known for documenting differences in patterns of care for differing socio-economic groups and their implications. In recent years, he has been devoting increasing effort to studying aspects of publicly reported quality performance measures and Medicaid policy.
Majid
Ezzati, PhD, is Associate Professor of International Health, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. Ezzati’s research focuses on understanding the causal determinants of health and disease, and how technological innovation and technology management can reduce exposure to health risks. His current research focuses on two main areas: 1)The relationship between energy technology, air pollution, and health in developing countries; and 2) Major health risk factors and their role in current and future disease burden, and in health inequalities. His research on risk factors focuses on environmental risks, smoking, and nutritional risks.
*Erica
Field, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her primary fields of interest are development and labor economics, with a regional focus on Latin America. Her past research has examined the household welfare effects of urban land titling programs in developing countries, including the impact of tenure security on labor supply, credit access and fertility. Her current research examines the link between health investments and economic mobility.
*Richard G. Frank, PhD, is Margaret T. Morris Professor of Health Economics, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. His interests are in the economics of mental health care, the economics of the pharmaceutical industry, and the organization and financing of physician group practices.
Kenneth A. Freedberg, MD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, and Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School. In addition, he is Director of Epidemiology and Outcomes Research at the Partners AIDS Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. Freedberg’s research interests include decision analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and clinical epidemiology, particularly related to HIV clinical care and policy.
*G. Scott Gazelle, MD, PhD, is Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School; Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health; Director, Institute for Technology Assessment, Massachusetts General Hospital; Director, Partners Radiology; and Director, Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Program in Cancer Outcomes Research Training. His research focuses on evaluating the benefits, costs, and appropriate use of new medical technologies.
*Sue J. Goldie, MD, MPH, is Professor of Health Decision Science, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Goldie’s research focuses on developing and validating computer-based models linking the basic biology of a disease and its epidemiology to population-based outcomes. She uses these models within a decision analytic framework to synthesize data, identify key knowledge gaps, and evaluate the clinical benefits, public health impact, and cost-effectiveness of alternative preventive and treatment interventions. Her focus in the last several years has been on three viruses of major public health importance: human papillomavirus, human immunodeficiency virus, and hepatitis.
Mary-Jo
DelVecchio Good, PhD, is Professor of Social Medicine, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Her current research interests include cultural and comparative studies of biomedicine, bioethics, and biotechnology; globalization of medical knowledge and markets; and gender, health policy and international health.
Steven Gortmaker, PhD, is Professor of the Practice of Health Sociology, Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health. His research is focused on the health of children and adolescents, particularly households living in poverty and minority populations. The major goal of this research has been to identify modifiable risks for morbidity and mortality in the young, and to both initiate and evaluate interventions to improve these outcomes. Gortmaker has focused on a broad variety of risks, ranging from sociological concepts such as income poverty, social stress and social networks, to behaviors such as smoking, inactivity (exemplified by television viewing) and diet. Interventions have included work at both the level of national and state policy, as well as programs at the regional, county, school, hospital, clinic and individual level.
*David
C. Grabowski, PhD, is Associate Professor of Health Economics, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. Grabowski’s research focuses on the economics of aging and health care regulation, with a particular interest in the area of long-term care. He has published a series of papers examining the economic incentives influencing nursing home quality. Specifically, his work has explored the effects of state Medicaid payment policies, certificate-of-need laws, asymmetric information, and labor prices toward explaining low-quality nursing home care.
Jerry R. Green, MA, PhD, is John Leverett Professor in the University, and David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy, Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. His current research includes work on the economics of incentives, principles of equity for use in collective decision making, and the use of data on choice to evaluate economic well-being.
Richard Hamermesh, PhD, is MBA Class of 1961 Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School, and Faculty Chair of the HBS Healthcare Initiative. He created and teaches the second-year MBA elective, Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital in Healthcare. Previously, he was the Course Head for the required first year course entitled The Entrepreneurial Manager.
*James K. Hammitt, ScM, MPP, PhD, is Professor of Economics and Decision Sciences, Department of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, Harvard School of Public Health. His research concerns the development and application of quantitative methods—including benefit-cost, decision, and risk analysis—to health and environmental policy. Topics include management of long-term environmental issues with important scientific uncertainties, such as global climate change and stratospheric-ozone depletion, evaluation of ancillary benefits and countervailing risks associated with risk-control measures, and characterization of social preferences over health and environmental risks using revealed-preference, contingent-valuation, and health-utility methods.
David Hemenway, MA, PhD, is Professor of Health Policy, Department of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention, Harvard School of Public Health. Much of Hemenway’s research has focused on injury prevention; he has investigated issues concerning motor vehicle injuries, fires, falls and fractures, suicides, child abuse, product safety, and firearm injuries. As an economist, some of Hemenway’s research involves the extension and testing of microeconomic theory (e.g., the role of positional versus functional goods in society) and the economics of health care (e.g., the relationship between safe behavior and insurance purchase.)
Howard Hiatt, MD, is Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Senior Physician, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He was formerly Blumgart Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. His present research interests include health policy, medical safety issues, and particularly, health disparities in the United States and in developing countries. He is also working closely with programs directed at people with drug-resistant tuberculosis and HIV in Peru, Russia and Haiti.
LeRoi Hicks, MD, MPH, is Instructor in Health Care Policy and in Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital's Division of General Medicine. His major research areas include the effects of patients’ racial and cultural background on clinical outcomes of chronic disease and the effects of the physician behavior on the quality of care administered to minority populations. Dr. Hicks is currently working with investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital on a funded study to examine racial differences in satisfaction in hospital care. The project examines racial disparities in measures of patient satisfaction with hospital care and how these disparities may be mediated by processes of hospital care.
Robert Higgins, MBA, is Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School, and a Managing General Partner and Founder, Highland Capital Partners in Boston. He co-created and currently teaches a course in the EC called Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital in Health Care. For several years, he taught the first-year course The Entrepreneurial Manager. He is a member of the Health Care Initiative, the Social Enterprise Initiative, and the Harvard Faculty Committee for the MD/MBA program.
D. Sunshine Hillygus, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Government, Department of Government, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her research and teaching interests include American voting behavior, campaigns and elections, survey research, and information technology and society. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, and IT & Society. She is co-author of the book, The Hard Count: The Social and Political Challenges of the 2000 Census (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006). She recently organized the Harvard University Program on Survey Research (http://www.iq.harvard.edu/psr/), an interdisciplinary group that encourages and facilitates research and instruction in the theory and practice of survey research.
William Hsiao, MPA, PhD, is K.T. Li Professor of Economics, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. For more than a decade, his research has concentrated on the development of national health insurance, cost containment measures, and payment methods for hospitals and physician services in the U.S. He is perhaps best known for his pioneering work in development of the resource-based relative value scale (RBRVS) for physician payment used by Medicare. Hsiao is currently designing a large simulation model of the U.S. health sector. Recently, he has been investigating the systemic aspects of health care and draws lessons from the experiences of more than a dozen nations. He has active projects in Colombia, South Africa, Taiwan and China, and has also worked on health system reform in Mexico, the U.S.A., the Philippines, Thailand, India, Singapore and Japan.
*Robert S. Huckman, PhD, is MBA Class of 1958 Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, and Faculty Research Fellow in the health care program of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on the linkages between organizational characteristics, technological choice, and operating performance, with an emphasis on the health care industry.
M.G. Myriam Hunink, PhD, is Adjunct Professor of Health Policy, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Hunink’s research focuses on the assessment of diagnostic imaging and image-guided therapeutic technologies, using techniques from clinical epidemiology, meta analysis, decision modeling, and cost-effectiveness analysis. Her main interest is in the evaluation of technologies for the management of cardiovascular disease. Methodological issues of special interest to her are the evaluation of diagnostic imaging and stochastic modeling.
*Haiden Huskamp, PhD, is Associate Professor of Health Economics, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses primarily on the economics of mental health and substance abuse treatment, the economics of the pharmaceutical industry, and the financing of end-of-life care services She is a recipient of a Career Development Award focused on the economics of psychotropic drugs from the National Institute of Mental Health.
Ashish Jha, MD, MPH, is Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health; Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; and staff physician at Boston VA Healthcare System and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Jha’s research focuses on: quality of care provided by health care systems, with a focus on health care disparities as a marker of poor care; information technology among other tools as potential solutions for reducing medical errors and disparities while improving over-all quality; and organizations that provide care for minorities and underserved populations and the role clinical information systems can play in improving their care.
Joseph Kalt, MA, PhD, is Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, John F. Kennedy School of Government. His research focuses on exploring the economic implications and political origins of the government regulation of markets. He also co-directs the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and from 1998-2005 served as Faculty Chair of the Harvard University Native American Program. Kalt has published widely in the area of natural resources economics and policy.
Frances Kamm, PhD, is Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her research is on nonconsequentalist normative ethical theory and topics in applied ethics, including bioethics, the distribution of scarce resources, and just war theory.
*Nancy Kane, DBA, is Professor of Management, Department of Health Policy and Management, and Associate Dean for Educational Programs, Harvard School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the financial and managerial performance of healthcare organizations. Recent and ongoing projects include analysis of individual health insurance markets at the state level – how insurers and consumers behave, and policy implications; assessment of the financial performance of hospitals in a local market area in which a nonprofit hospital converts to investor-owned status; development of quantifiable measures of charitable activity, tax-exempt value, and financial performance of health care organizations; case studies of the feasibility of implementing managed care tools in a variety of international settings.
Robert S. Kaplan, PhD, is Baker Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School. Kaplan’s research, teaching, and consulting focus on linking cost and performance measurement systems to strategy implementation and operational excellence. He has been a co-developer of both activity-based costing and the Balanced Scorecard.
Nancy Keating, MD, MPH, is Assistant Professor of Medicine and of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. She also practices general internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Keating’s research interests include: the quality of care for patients at risk for and diagnosed with cancer, particularly breast cancer; health care at the interface of primary and specialty care; and communication between providers and patients and among providers.
Ronald Kessler, PhD, is Professor of Health Care Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. His research is in the area of psychiatric epidemiology. Among his numerous current projects are the following: 1) continued analysis of data from the National Comorbidity Survey, the first nationally representative general population survey in the US to study the prevalence and correlates of DSM psychiatric disorders; 2) direction of the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health surveys, a series of nationally representative epidemiological surveys carried out in 28 countries; 3) development of several experimental workplace interventions in the United States, Latin America, and Asia aimed at determining the cost-effectiveness of diverse workplace disease management programs from the employer perspective; and 4) direction of the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group, a panel study of psychological adjustment among people who were residents of the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina at the time of the storm.
Jane J. Kim, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Health Decision Science, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Kim’s research focuses on the development and application of mathematical modeling methods to evaluate health policy issues related to women’s health. She has developed and used models to perform cost-effectiveness analyses of cervical cancer screening strategies in the U.S., Europe, Hong Kong, and less developed regions.
David C. King, PhD, is Lecturer in Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Research Director, Institute of Politics, John F. Kennedy School of Government. He teaches about the U.S. Congress, interest groups, and political parties, and is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of three books focusing on Congress and on public confidence in government. He chairs Harvard’s Program for Newly Elected Members of the U.S. Congress. In the wake of the 2000 presidential elections, he chaired the Task Force on Election Administration on behalf of former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. King oversees several large national surveys that explore youth attitudes about politics, and his current research is on political polarization.
*Gary King, MA, PhD, is David Florence Professor of Government, Department of Government, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Director of The Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard. His research interests include work on legislative redistricting, ecological inference, and methods for achieving cross-cultural comparability in survey research. His statistical methods and software are used extensively in academia, government, consulting, and private industry.
Arthur M. Kleinman, MD, MA, is Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology and Chair, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Medical Anthropology, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Kleinman’s research interests include the experience of chronic illness, social suffering, depression, emerging infectious diseases, substance abuse, suicide, political violence, trauma, aging, ethnicity, and disabilities. The author of five books, co-editor of twenty volumes, and with more than 180 research and review articles and chapters, he has just completed a new book on moral experience and global social change.
*Michael Kremer, PhD, is Gates Professor of Developing Societies, Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is an expert on AIDS and infectious diseases in developing countries, economics of developing countries, education and development, and mechanisms for encouraging research and development. His noted research on development includes: a study of a 1992-97 program through which the government of Colombia provided school vouchers to 100,000 students; preventing/eliminating debt accumulation by dictators in developing countries; ways of encouraging private research and development in tropical agriculture; and ways of encouraging research and development on AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria vaccines.
Karen Kuntz, ScD, is Adjunct Professor of Health Decision Science, Department of Health Policy and Management and Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, and Professor of Health Policy and Management, University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Kuntz is a health decision scientist with experience in the methods and applications of using simulation modeling to evaluate clinical and public health strategies. She is the principal investigator of one of the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET) grants funded by the National Cancer Institute to evaluate the national trends in colorectal cancer incidence and mortality. She is also principal investigator of a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to examine the effects of disparities in screening, follow-up and treatment on cancer-related outcomes. In addition to specific applications, she has become one of the leading authorities on describing errors and biases that can occur in disease modeling.
*Bruce E. Landon, MD, MBA, is Associate Professor of Health Care Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Landon’s research involves assessing the impact of different characteristics of physician and health care organizations, ranging from health plans to physician group practices, on the provision of health care services; care for patients with HIV; and the experiences of state Medicaid agencies with managed care.
Mary Beth Landrum, PhD, is Associate Professor of Biostatistics, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. Landrum’s research focuses on the development and application of statistical methodology for health services research. This research has several related themes including the development of medical guidelines, the profiling of health care providers, causal inference, and analysis with missing data. She collaborates on a variety of projects examining patterns of treatment, quality of care, and patient outcomes in the fields of cardiovascular disease, mental health and cancer.
Lisa Lehmann, MD, MSc, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Medicine and Instructor in Social Medicine, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School. She is actively engaged in philosophical and empirical research in ethical issues in genetics, research ethics, truth telling in medicine, and religion and medicine.
Tracy A. Lieu, MD, MPH, is Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School, and Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Both a general pediatrician and health services researcher, she is Director of DACP’s Center for Child Health Care Studies, a multidisciplinary group whose goal is to improve children’s health through research that enhances decisions by policy makers, clinicians, and parents. Lieu’s research focuses on primary care delivery, family-centered outcomes, and cost-effectiveness. Her current studies include CDC- and NIH-supported projects in vaccine safety, delivery, and economics, and childhood asthma disparities. Before coming to DACP, Lieu conducted research at Kaiser Permanente in Northern California. She has served on national policymaking committees including the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. She directs the Children’s Hospital site of the Harvard Pediatric Health Services Research fellowship, teaches in the medical and public health schools, and practices as a part-time pediatrician with Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates.
Richard Light, PhD, is Walter H. Gale Professor of Education, John F. Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Graduate School of Education. His work emphasizes ways to collect and analyze information to improve policy decisions. His co-authored books, Summing Up: The Science of Reviewing Research and By Design: Planning Research on Higher Education, present modern methods for examining the effectiveness of education initiatives. Light is currently director of the Harvard Seminar on Assessment, a consortium that brings together faculty and senior administrators from 24 colleges and universities to carry out research on college effectiveness.
Jeanne Madden, PhD, is Instructor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School. Madden works primarily with the Drug Policy Research Group in the area of policy evaluation. She recently directed a comprehensive study to determine the effects on maternal and infant health outcomes, service utilization and costs of two policies that, in succession, shortened and then lengthened standard hospital stays at childbirth. Ongoing research includes a related study involving post-cesarean lengths of stay and investigations into the detection and treatment of maternal depression. Madden also works in the area of international pharmaceuticals policy and pricing.
Brigitte Madrian, PhD, is Aetna Professor of Public Policy and Corporate Management, John F. Kennedy School of Government. Madrian's research focuses on employee benefits and social insurance programs, particularly retirement savings plans and health insurance. Her current research focuses on the relationship between 401(k) plan design and employee saving outcomes. She has also examined the impact of health insurance on the job choice and retirement decisions of employees and the hiring decisions of firms.
*Peter V. Marsden, PhD, is Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. His research interests are centered on social organization, especially formal organizations and social networks. He has ongoing interests in social methodology and in the sociology of medicine. Research projects include investigation of organizational sampling frames, the human resource policies and practices of U.S. work establishments, and projects on social network analysis linked to the General Social Survey. He was a co-investigator on two studies of organizational aspects of medical care, one on quality improvement initiatives in HIV care, the other on patterns of informal consultation within a clinic.
*Marie C. McCormick, MD, ScD, is Sumner and Esther Feldberg Professor of Maternal and Child Health, Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, and Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School. Her research involves epidemiologic and health services research investigations in the areas related to infant mortality and the outcomes of high-risk neonates. Current projects are in the following areas: outcomes of infants experiencing neonatal complications like low birth weight, and interventions potentially ameliorating adverse outcomes; the evaluation of programs designed to improve the health of families and children; and maternal health and prematurity.
F. Warren McFarlan, DBA, is T.J. Dermot Dunphy Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration and Albert H. Gordon Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, Harvard Business School. He has been a long-time teacher in the Advanced Management Program: International Senior Managers Program, Delivering Information Services Program, and several of the Social Sector programs. He teaches currently in the First Year Financial Reporting and Control course as well as in several short Executive Education programs. He is co-chair of the Senior Executives Program for China.
*Thomas G. McGuire, PhD, is Professor of Health Economics, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. McGuire’s research focuses on the design and impact of health care payment systems, the economics of health care disparities, and the economics of mental health policy. He has contributed to the theory of physician, hospital, and health plan payment. His current research includes application of theoretical and empirical methods from labor economics to the area of health care disparities. He has analyzed the reasons behind “discrimination” by doctors, and conducted empirical research to identify the contribution of the various mechanisms behind health care disparities.
*Barbara J. McNeil, MD, PhD, is Ridley Watts Professor and Chair, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School. McNeil's research activities have focused on several areas, most notably technology assessment and quality of care. Her most recent work includes two large studies supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The first focused on a comparison of quality of care for veterans with cardiac disease with the care provided to Medicare beneficiaries seen in private settings. Its report led to the introduction of many changes in the care of veterans with cardiac disease. As a result of that study, she and her colleagues are currently performing a similar study on cancer care. McNeil also works closely with the national Blue Cross Blue Shield Association in several areas related to the identification and dissemination of approaches to improving either the quality or the efficiency of care in plans across the country.
Ellen Meara, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Health Economics, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. Meara’s current research focuses on three areas: 1) welfare reform and substance abuse; 2) racial and educational disparities in mortality and health over time; and 3) the nature and determinants of medical spending over time.
Michelle Mello, JD, MPhil, PhD, is C. Boyden Gray Associate Professor of Health Policy and Law, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Mello conducts empirical research into issues at the intersection of law, ethics, and health policy. She is the author of more than 70 articles and book chapters on the medical malpractice system, medical errors and patient safety, research ethics, mass tort litigation, the obesity epidemic, pharmaceuticals, clinical ethics, and other topics. Current and recent projects include an investigation of the impact of the medical malpractice crisis on physician supply in Pennsylvania; a study of factors contributing to medical errors in the hospital; a study of legal relationships between academic investigators and industry sponsors of clinical trials; and a feasibility study of an administrative “no-fault” system of compensating medical injuries. Dr. Mello is also studying ethical issues confronting the pharmaceutical industry as a Greenwall Faculty Scholar. In 2006, she was the recipient of the Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award from AcademyHealth for outstanding promise in the field of health services research.
*Nolan H. Miller, PhD, is Associate Professor of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government and Faculty Associate at the Center for International Development and the Center for Business and Government at KSG. His primary research is concerned with theoretical models of incentive problems in organizations, currently focusing on industrial organization theory, health care, and insurance markets.
*Carl N. Morris, MS, PhD, is Professor of Statistics, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Health Care Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. His research interests include hierarchical modeling and empirical Bayes methods, exponential families, experimental design and social experiments, Bayesian and likelihood theory, multivariate data analysis, sampling theory, interface between statistical theory and applications, statistical theory in sports and competition, and statistics for health care and health services.
Megan Murray, MD, MPH, ScD, is Associate Professor of Epidemiology, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health. Her research group has the following major areas of interest: 1) within-species comparative genomics of M. tuberculosis strains; 2) modeling the transmission dynamics of emerging infectious disease; 3) human iron metabolism and tuberculosis susceptibility; 4) identifying risk factors for the transmission of drug sensitive and resistant tuberculosis transmission using molecular and conventional epidemiologic methods; 5) outcomes research in tuberculosis treatment and control programs; 6) pedagogy in interdisciplinary research and emerging infectious disease; and 7) exhaled particles and their relationship to infectivity of infectious agents.
Peter J. Neumann, ScD, is Director of the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health, Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, Tufts-New England Medical Center; Professor of Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine; and Adjunct Associate Professor of Policy and Decision Science, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. His research focuses on the role of cost-effectiveness analysis in health care decision making. He has conducted numerous economic evaluations of medical technologies, including evaluations of treatments for Alzheimer's Disease. He also directs a project to develop a comprehensive registry of cost-effectiveness analyses in health care. Neumann has contributed to the literature on the use of willingness to pay and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) in valuing health benefits. His other research has focused on the Food and Drug Administration's regulation of health economic information, and the role of clinical and economic evidence in informing public and private sector health care decisions, including those made by the Medicare program.
*Joseph P. Newhouse, PhD, is John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is chair of the Interfaculty Initiative in Health Policy and the Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy. Newhouse is best known for his work on the financing and organization of medical care services. His recent research topics include risk adjustment for reimbursement of health plans and health providers and the impact of managed care on use of services, cost, and quality of care, as well as improved medical care price indices and the economics of the Medicaid tobacco settlement.
*Sharon-Lise Normand, PhD, is Professor of Health Care Policy (Biostatistics), Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School and Professor in the Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the development of statistical methods for health services research, primarily using Bayesian approaches to problem solving, including assessment of quality of care, methods for causal inference, provider profiling, meta-analysis, and latent variable modeling. She has developed a long line of research on methods for the analysis of patterns of treatment and quality of care for patients with cardiovascular disease and with mental disorders.
Paul Peterson, MA, PhD, is Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government, Department of Government, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University; and Editor-in-Chief of Education Next, a journal of opinion and research on education policy. He is a specialist on American federalism and is currently studying the effects of the devolution of responsibility for health care policy from the national government to state and local governments.
*Gary P. Pisano, PhD, is Harrie E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. Pisano’s research focuses on the development, adoption and management of new medical technologies. He has done research on the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical device industries. His current research examines the organizational and management factors influencing learning curves in the adoption of minimally invasive cardiac surgery procedures. He is also engaged in researching the ways in which the quality and cost of health care can be improved through improved design and management of health care delivery systems.
Joseph Pliskin, PhD, is Adjunct Professor of Health Policy and Management, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, and Sidney Liswood Professor of Health Care Management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Pliskin’s research interests focus on clinical decision making, operations management in health care organizations, cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis in health and medicine, technology assessment, utility theory and decision analysis. He has published extensively on issues relating to end stage renal disease, heart disease, Down syndrome, technology assessment and methodological issues in decision analysis. He is co-author of a recent book Decision Making in Health and Medicine: Integrating Evidence and Values (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 2001), and is working on a new book on operations management in health organizations.
Michael E. Porter, PhD, is Bishop William Lawrence University Professor, based at Harvard Business School. He is the author of 17 books and over 125 articles, and he is a leading authority on competitive strategy and the competitiveness and economic development of nations, states, and regions. Since 2001, Porter has devoted considerable attention to a body of work on competition in the health care system. His Harvard Business Review article with Elizabeth Teisberg, ‘Redefining Competition in Health Care’ (2004), stimulated a dialog in many countries. His joint book with Professor Teisberg, Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results (Harvard Business School Press), is the American College of Healthcare Executives 2007 James A. Hamilton book of the year. Porter is currently playing an active role in catalyzing health care reform in the United States and other countries including Holland, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
*Lisa A. Prosser, MS, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School. Prosser's major research interests are economic evaluations of health interventions and methods for valuing changes in health. Her current research focuses on policy-relevant topics concerning the cost-effectiveness of childhood interventions, such as a study of newborn screening for metabolic disorders that will assess how the inclusion of stress and anxiety associated with false positive tests affects the cost-effectiveness of expanded newborn screening programs.
Howard
Raiffa, SM, PhD, is Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Managerial Economics, Emeritus, Harvard Business School and John F. Kennedy School of Government. He authored Negotiation Analysis: the Science and Art of Collaborative Decision Making (Harvard University Press, 2002). Recently, he developed materials for a new undergraduate course on “Decisions, Games, and Negotiations,” which he co-teaches. He is interested in the field of decision sciences, broadly interpreted.
Joan Y. Reede, MD, MPH, MS, is Dean for Diversity and Community Partnership, Associate Professor of Medicine, and Director of the Minority Faculty Development Program, Harvard Medical School; Associate Professor in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health; and Assistant on Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research interests focus primarily on health policy and minority health including, in particular, minority faculty development; factors influencing minority physician training and career decisions; and leadership in public health. Currently, she is conducting a number of programs designed to facilitate the academic and professional career development of underrepresented minorities ranging from minority students, high school through graduate/medical school level to postdoctoral fellows, house staff and minority faculty. She has also initiated the development of a pioneering fellowship program in minority health policy, which is dedicated to training physicians for leadership roles in health policy.
Meredith Rosenthal, PhD, is Associate Professor of Health Economics and Policy, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Rosenthal’s principal research interests revolve around economic incentives that influence consumer and provider health care decisions. She is currently working on a series of related projects that examine evolving trends in the health insurance market, including the use of pay-for-performance, tiered networks, and consumer-directed health plans.
Dennis Ross-Degnan, ScD, is Associate Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care; Director of Research at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care; and Harvard Coordinator of the International Network for Rational Use of Drugs, a 10-country consortium involved in innovative interventions to improve pharmaceutical use. His primary research interests are analyzing the impacts of pharmaceutical policies on utilization and clinical outcomes, evaluating behavioral strategies for improving the use of medicines in developing countries, and development of appropriate research methods for studying pharmaceutical use and quality improvement interventions.
*Donald B. Rubin, MS, PhD, is John L. Loeb Professor of Statistics and Chair, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He has two long-standing and active research projects that are of direct relevance to the Interfaculty Initiative in Health Policy. The first involves developing advanced statistical methods based on imbedding econometric "instrumental variables" insights within the potential outcomes framework for causal inference (called by Holland and others the "Rubin Causal Model"); these techniques are especially relevant to situations that can be considered conceptually equivalent to randomized trials with noncompliance. The second project involves developing extensions of propensity score methodology for matched sampling and subclassification adjustment in observational studies, techniques that, since their introduction by Rosenbaum and Rubin in 1983, have become standard tools for inference in nonrandomized medical studies.
*Joshua Salomon, PhD, is Associate Professor of International Health, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. Salomon's research focuses on priority-setting in global health, within three main substantive areas: measurement and valuation of population health; modeling and forecasting of health outcomes and disease burden; and evaluation of the potential impact and cost-effectiveness of current and future health interventions. He is an investigator on projects relating to summary measures of population health; modeling HIV/AIDS epidemics and interventions for prevention and treatment; modeling disease outcomes for population health monitoring and surveillance; and evaluating the potential impact and cost effectiveness of new vaccines. He also leads a collaborative project with the Mexican Ministry of Health on priority setting for interventions in the context of health reform.
Thomas M. Scanlon, PhD, is Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Scanlon’s dissertation and some of his first papers were in mathematical logic, but the bulk of his teaching and writing has been in moral and political philosophy. He has published papers on freedom of expression, the nature of rights, conceptions of welfare, and theories of justice, as well as on foundational questions in moral theory. His teaching in the department has included courses on theories of justice, equality, and recent ethical theory. His book, What We Owe to Each Other, was published by Harvard University Press in 1998; a collection of papers on political theory, The Difficulty of Tolerance, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2003.
Eric Schneider, MD, MSc, is Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Schneider’s research focuses on the quality of health care, specifically in the areas of measurement methods in quality and safety, the impact of public reporting and pay-for-performance on health care delivery, and the impact of socioeconomic factors, such as race, ethnicity, education, and insurance, on the quality of care. His research addresses clinical preventive services, common chronic diseases, cancer, and surgical services. He teaches Quality Improvement in Health Care at the Harvard School of Public Health and practices and teaches primary care internal medicine at Brigham Internal Medicine Associates and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Uwe Siebert, MD, MSc, MPH, ScD, is Director of the Cardiovascular Research Program, Institute for Technology Assessment, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Associate Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School. His research interests include applying decision-analytic modeling, meta-analysis, quality-of-life assessment, and cost-effectiveness analysis in the framework of health technology assessments (HTA) as well as in the clinical context of routine health care. His current substantive research focuses on cardiovascular disease, cancer screening, hepatitis C, HIV, and neurologic disorders. His methodological research is focused on evaluations of diagnostic imaging procedures as well as the development of causal decision models based on complex longitudinal data with time-varying interventions or exposures.
William Simpson, PhD, is Lecturer of Business Administration and Principal Statistician, Harvard Business School. He teaches a two semester doctoral course in probability and statistics for the social sciences. As a statistician with Research Computing Services, he has provided statistical support and data analysis for a wide variety of faculty research projects. He has also been a statistical consultant for a number of organizations including Cambridge Hospital, Children’s Hospital, the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute, Abt Associates, Verizon, and the Forum Corporation.
Theda Skocpol, PhD, is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology and Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She also served as Director of the Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) at Harvard from 1999 to 2006. For the last fifteen years, Skocpol’s research has focused upon U.S. politics in a historical and comparative perspective. Skocpol is coordinating a major research project on civic engagement in American democracy, considering the rise and development of voluntary associations from 1790 to the present, and she is also working on issues of the state and civil society in cross-national perspectives.
Warner Slack , MD, MS, is Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and, with Dr. Howard L. Bleich, Co-President of the Center for Clinical Computing and Co-Director of the Division of Clinical Computing, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Pursuing his interest in the field of mental testing, Slack has examined the use and misuse of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and the results of his studies, done in collaboration with Dr. Douglas Porter, have been influential in reformative efforts, such as the “truth in testing” legislation in New York State. Over the years, he has established new computer-based approaches to the medical interview, and developed and studied programs that provide direct assistance to the patient in the management of common, important medical and psychological problems. He was an early advocate of the patient’s right to participate in decisions about diagnosis and treatment.
Daniel C. Snow, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. His research focuses on the impact of new technologies on firms and industries. In particular, he examines the choices companies face when deciding which technologies to develop. His research on the “Last Gasps” of technologies in the face of competition from new technologies has been influential in shaping thinking about innovation and technology transitions.
*Stephen B. Soumerai, MS, ScD, is Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Soumerai directs the Drug Policy Research Program, focused on pharmaceutical use and the quality and outcomes of health care. He is known for his research on methods of improving clinicians' drug prescribing practices and other health care decisions; and on the effects of drug coverage and cost-containment policies on the quality, costs and outcomes of health care in vulnerable populations, such as chronically ill elderly. His current work includes studies of: cost-related underuse of medications among the elderly; the effects of a statewide triplicate prescription (physician surveillance) policy for benzodiazepines on the appropriateness and outcomes of sedative-hypnotic use; and the effects of Medicaid policies restricting access to atypical antipsychotic drugs on the quality of care for patients with schizophrenia.
*David G. Stevenson, MS, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Health Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. Stevenson’s primary research interests are aging, disability, and long-term care. His recent work has focused on nursing home quality of care. His research addresses the recent rise in nursing home litigation, the potential value of consumer complaints data in assessing quality of care, and the use of public reporting to create a market for nursing home quality. Other ongoing research examines the use of nursing home adverse incident reports for facility-level quality improvement and for state-level quality assurance activities.
David Studdert, LLB, MPH, ScD, is Adjunct Professor of Law and Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. He is also a Consultant at RAND. Studdert is involved in a series of projects that bring quantitative and qualitative methods to bear on issues at the intersection of law and health. One current study explores the potential for the medical malpractice system to yield helpful insights into the factors that contribute to medical errors. A second study, conducted in collaboration with investigators at RAND, examines appeals by managed care enrollees against benefits denials by their health plans. Other policy areas addressed in recent research projects include the performance of the National Practitioner Data Bank, HIV discrimination in the workplace, and conflict between clinicians and families over the care of critically ill patients. In addition, Studdert continues to investigate options for reforming compensation systems, particularly the medical malpractice system.
*Katherine Swartz, MS, PhD, is Professor of Health Policy and Economics, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. She is also Director of Graduate Studies for the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy. Her current research interests focus on the population without health insurance and efforts to increase access to health care coverage; reasons for and ways to control episodes of care that involve extremely-high expenditures; and how we might pay for expanded health insurance coverage. Swartz also is interested in the impact of the mapping of the human genome and its implications for health insurance; in particular, what types of genetic illnesses and conditions will be no longer insurable by private insurance companies, and the role that government may have in providing financing of new genetic therapies and tests.
Kimberly M. Thompson, ScD, is Associate Professor of Risk Analysis and Decision Science, Department of Health Policy and Management and Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health. Thompson’s research interests and teaching focus on the issues related to developing and applying quantitative methods for risk assessment and risk management, and consideration of the public policy implications associated with including uncertainty and variability in risk characterization. Drawing on a diverse background, she seeks to effectively integrate technological, social, political, legal, and economic issues into risk analyses that inform public policy and improve decision making in what she calls the "Age of Risk Management." She has particular interests in identifying and managing risks to sensitive subpopulations with emphasis on children’s health (see www.kidsrisk.harvard.edu).
Connie Mah Trinacty, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Her research focuses on issues related to access and quality of care improvement among vulnerable chronically ill populations, particularly in the area of healthcare disparities among diabetes patients. Trinacty recently completed a series of longitudinal studies evaluating racial differences in long-term diabetes self-management practices among adults in a managed care setting. She is currently working with the Drug Policy Research Group in developing and evaluating patient-level interventions to improve medication adherence among patients with diabetes at risk of cardiovascular disease.
Anita Tucker, DBA, MSc, is Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. Her research focuses on organizational improvement and learning, and healthcare. Current research projects include the managerial impact on learning from operational failures and diffusing improvement practices across hospital units.
Nancy Turnbull, MBA, is Senior Lecturer on Health Policy, Department of Health Policy and Management, and Associate Dean for Educational Programs, Harvard School of Public Health. Her research interests include health insurance regulation, health care access, consumer participation in managed care plans, and international applications of managed care. Before her foray into academia, Turnbull worked for nearly ten years for the Massachusetts Division of Insurance, where she was First Deputy Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner for Health Policy.
Sidney Verba, PhD, is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library. Verba’s current research interests involve the relationship of political to economic equality, mass and elite political ideologies, and mass political participation.
Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, is Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Associate Director of the Program in Epidemiology and Outcomes Research, Harvard Center for AIDS Research. Her research interests include the promotion of routine HIV counseling, testing and referral and the economic evaluation of alternative HIV testing and treatment policies. Walensky has published work on evaluating alternative treatment strategies for patients with primary HIV infection, on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of HIV vaccines of varying efficacies, and on the value of primary genotypic resistance testing. Her research is conducted both in the US and abroad. Current projects include: 1) the evaluation of the impact of treatment on AIDS survival in the US;2) the development of and HIV testing program in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; 3) a cost-effectiveness analysis on routine HIV testing in South Africa; and 4) a clinical and cost-effectiveness analysis of the use of sentinel resistance testing in Cote d’Ivoire.
Jane C. Weeks, MD, is Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health. Bringing together faculty from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Children’s Hospital, and Harvard School of Public Health, she established (in 1995) and directs the multidisciplinary Center for Outcomes and Policy Research, which focuses on critical evaluation of the outcomes and costs of cancer care. A major project is the development of Clinical Research Information System (CRIS), a database of comprehensive clinical, treatment, outcome, and cost data for all patients treated by Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care. In a related effort, Weeks heads the Outcomes Project of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, an affiliation of 17 cancer centers nationwide. Through the collection of comprehensive uniform treatment and outcomes data from these centers and selected community sites, this project is developing methods to monitor and improve the quality of cancer care and examining the outcomes of care outside the clinical trial setting.
*Milton C. Weinstein, PhD, is Henry J. Kaiser Professor of Health Policy and Management, Department of Health Policy and Management and Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; and Director of the Program on Economic Evaluation of Medical Technology. He is best known for his research on cost-effectiveness of medical practices and for developing methods of economic evaluation and decision analysis in health care. He is currently involved in research projects relating to testing and treatment for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, screening for lung cancer, and treatment of cardiovascular risk factors in the U.S. and developing countries.
Daniel Wikler, PhD, is Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. His current research interests are ethical issues in population and international health, including the allocation of health resources, health research involving human subjects, and ethical dilemmas arising in public health practice. His published work addresses many issues in bioethics, including issues in reproduction, transplantation, and end-of-life decision-making in addition to population and international health. Wikler served as the first Staff Ethicist for the World Health Organization, and remains a consultant to several WHO programs. He is presently co-director of the Program on Ethical Issues in International Health Research at the School of Public Health and co-director of a collaborative project with the PRC Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization to join Chinese colleagues, including former Program fellows, in an effort to enhance the China’s capacity for ethical review of health research.
David R. Williams, PhD, is Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. His main research interests are in the areas of the socioeconomic status, the experience of discrimination or racism, and resulting health effects. He has examined the extent to which psychosocial factors, ranging from stress, racism, social support, and religious involvement, to psychological resources and health behaviors, are linked to health and social status, and can explain socioeconomic and racial variations in health. He has incorporated Network psychosocial measures such as MacStatus and reactive responding, and biological measures such as the measurement of cortisol in two of his research projects (The National Phone Survey and the Ypsilanti Study) since joining the Network. He is also involved in the collaborative research the Network has undertaken with the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, and is a member of the Emerging Science Committee of CARDIA, serving as a link between the CARDIA study and the MacArthur Network investigators. In addition he serves on the Scientific Directions Committee of the Jackson Heart Study, a large NHLBI-funded prospective study, and the Data and Safety Monitoring Board, Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, another NHLBI study.
Marta Wosinska, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. Wosinska teaches the required first-year MBA course in marketing, and is affiliated with the HBS Healthcare Initiative because of her interest in health care, particularly in pharmaceuticals. Her research focuses on the effectiveness of marketing instruments on patient acquisition and retention. Her work on direct-to-consumer advertising and on mail pharmacies has been received with a considerable interest by pharmaceutical manufacturers, health insurance companies and governmental agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission.
Winnie Chi-Man Yip, PhD, is Associate Professor of International Health Policy and Economics, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. Her major research interests include economic development and health/well being in developing countries, international health system assessment and designs, and financing of health care in less developed countries. She is currently co-principle investigator of the Health Care System Study of Hong Kong, a project that provides evidence-based assessment of the current health care system of Hong Kong and develops alternative health care financing/delivery options. Yip is also co-leading the Evaluation of Taiwan's National Health Insurance System project to systematically assess the impact of Taiwan's NHI on access to health care, health outcomes, public satisfaction and distribution of benefits. This project also examines performance-based provider payment methods in Taiwan. She has also evaluated China's health reform initiatives, including the experiments in Zhenjiang and Jiujiang cities, and other community-based health schemes in rural regions.
*Alan M. Zaslavsky, MS, PhD, is Professor of Health Care Policy (Statistics) in the Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. His methodological interests include design and analysis of surveys, Bayesian and hierarchical modeling, small area estimation, microsimulation, missing data, and categorical data. His research topics in health care policy include measurement of health care quality through consumer assessments and clinical measures, factors affecting access to care, health care disparities, patterns of care for cancer, and psychiatric epidemiology.
*Richard J. Zeckhauser, PhD, is Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy, John F. Kennedy School of Government. Many of his policy investigations explore ways to promote the health of human beings, to help markets work more effectively, and to foster informed and appropriate choices by individuals and government agencies. Much of his conceptual research examines possibilities for democratic, decentralized allocation procedures. His current research projects are directed at pharmaceutical pricing, deception, and reputations, bad apples and bad bets in social policy, trust in Islamic and Western nations, information economics and Italian Renaissance art, the blending of negotiations and auctions, and collaborative undertakings between the public and private sectors.
July 2007
