Student Profiles

Decision Sciences

G. Scott Gazelle, 1999 graduate, received his BA magna cum laude and with distinction in Philosophy from Dartmouth College, and his MD from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He completed a Radiology residency at University Hospitals of Cleveland, where he also served as Chief Resident. Following residency, he completed a fellowship in Abdominal Imaging and Interventional Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and then he joined the faculty at MGH in the Division of Abdominal Imaging and Interventional Radiology. While continuing to serve in this capacity, as the winner of the 1995 American Roentgen Ray Society Scholarship, he completed an MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health, concentrating in Health Care Management. In 1999, he received his PhD in Health Policy.

Currently, Scott is Professor in Radiology at Harvard Medical School and Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. He serves as Director of Partners Radiology, as well as Director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Program in Cancer Outcomes Research Training. Scott is also Senior Scientist at the Partners Institute for Health Policy and Director of Clinical Research in the Department of Radiology at MGH. In 1997 he established and now directs The Institute for Technology Assessment at MGH.

Bruce Schackman, 2001 graduate, received an AB magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1980 and an MBA with honors from Harvard Business School in 1984. From 1984 to 1992 he worked as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, Inc., where he became a leader of the firm's pharmaceuticals and medical products practice. On a leave of absence from McKinsey, he spent six months working as a management expert in the Office of the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. He subsequently worked as a securities analyst covering the biotechnology industry and at a venture capital company as a managing director responsible for health care investments. His dissertation research was on the cost-effectiveness of improving access to early treatment among HIV-infected individuals. Bruce is currently Associate Professor of Public Health at the Weill Cornell Medical College (New York) and Chief of the Division of Health Policy.

Jane Kim, 2005 graduate, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1995 with a BA in Psychology. For the following two years, she worked as a Research Coordinator for Massachusetts General Hospital, studying behavioral inhibition in children of anxious and depressed parents. In 1997, she joined the Research and Development group of Transkaryotic Therapies, Inc., a fledgling biotechnology company, where she focused on identifying treatment options for rare metabolic disorders. She also worked as a Research Analyst for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, surveying and analyzing trends in maternal mortality and morbidity in Massachusetts. In 2001, she received an SM in Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health and entered the PhD program. She pursued her dissertation research at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, performing cost-effectiveness analyses on cervical cancer screening strategies in the US, the results of which were published in JAMA and the Journal of Public Health Medicine. In 2002, she won the Lee B. Lusted student prize for her presentation at the Society for Medical Decision Making Annual Meeting. She defended her dissertation in June 2005 and is currently Assistant Professor of Health Decision Science in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Nicole Gastineau Campos, 5th year, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 2001 with an AB in Psychology and Biology. She wrote her senior thesis on Alzheimer’s Disease, exploring competition between notch protein and amyloid precursor protein (APP) for ?-secretase in APP transgenic mice. After graduation, Nicole worked as a research assistant for Professor Paul Farmer at Partners In Health and the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at Harvard Medical School. In this capacity, she researched such topics as the treatment of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in resource-poor settings (with a focus on Haiti), health and human rights, and the results of partnerships in humanitarian efforts. Nicole then enrolled as a master’s student in the Health Policy and Management Department at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), where she earned a Master of Science in June 2005 and was awarded the Charles F. Wilinsky Award. While at HSPH, she worked with Professor Sue J. Goldie on a project studying the cost-effectiveness of treatment for Hepatitis C in an urban population co-infected with HIV. In fall 2005, Nicole entered the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy. She is a former recipient of a traineeship from the National Library of Medicine and a Program in Cancer Outcomes Research Training fellowship funded by the National Cancer Institute. Her research examines the potential impact of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination as a cervical cancer prevention strategy, particularly the cost-effectiveness of targeting adolescent girls in Eastern Africa, where cervical cancer rates are the highest in the world. She is also interested in the biologic implications of infection with multiple HPV types, and whether the natural history of cervical disease is influenced by interactions between types.

Davene Wright, 4th year, graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004 with a BS in Polymer Engineering and Textile Chemistry. From 2000-2004, she was a research assistant and ORISE Fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the Office of Genomics and the Chronic Disease Nutrition Branch. Her work at the CDC included assisting in the development of a collaborative CDC proposal to use the NHANES III DNA Bank to examine genes of public health importance and co-authoring a profile on breast and ovarian cancer for the CDC’s Public Health Perspectives series. From 2004-2006, she served as a research assistant/programmer at Mathematica Policy Research in Cambridge, MA, where she assisted in an evaluation of the MCHB performance measurement system, conducted an assessment of health websites’ content quality and effectiveness in information dissemination as part of the Healthy People 2010 initiative, and built a model of costs and retention for the National Health Service Corps, among other projects. She was also a research scientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Technology Assessment where she worked on a microsimulation model of lung cancer screening and treatment. Davene was awarded a summer associateship to conduct childhood obesity research for the RAND Arroyo Center in 2008. Her research involves the use of innovative simulation models to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of obesity policies from both a clinical and public health perspective. Davene was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in public policy in 2007 and was previously the recipient of a traineeship from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Economics

Haiden Huskamp, 1997 graduate, received a BA in Public Policy with a concentration in health policy from Duke University in 1989. Before enrolling in the PhD program, Haiden served as an Associate for the Alpha Center in Washington, DC from 1990-1992. From 1989-1990, she was a Program Analyst for the Advisory Council on Social Security, Department of Health and Human Services, and in 1989, she served as a Research Assistant for the Health Program of the National Governor's Association. As a student in the PhD Program in Health Policy, Haiden was a National Institute of Mental Health trainee, and she worked on various research projects related to the financing and organization of MHSA services, pharmaceutical pricing, and health spending trends. Her dissertation was entitled “The Economics of Managed Behavioral Health Care Benefit Carve-Outs.” Haiden received her PhD in 1997 and is currently Associate Professor of Health Economics in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.

Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin, 2000 graduate, graduated magna cum laude from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1993. She then worked for two years at The Lewin Group, a health care policy consulting firm, in their managed care practice. Melinda was a recipient of a two-year traineeship from the Agency for Healthcare Policy and Research, and the winner of a Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences summer dissertation fellowship. Melinda was a research assistant for Joseph Newhouse on a project related to risk adjustment and care for those at the end-of-life, and published a paper with Dr. Newhouse about risk adjustment in the Medicare program. She was also a participant in the Harvard/Sloan Center for the study of the Managed Care Industry from which she received funding. Melinda's dissertation was titled “Risk Selection in the Medicare Program” and consisted of papers on risk adjustment, financing of care for those at the end-of-life, and competition between HMOs serving Medicare beneficiaries. She received her PhD in June 2000, and is currently Health Economist and Co-Director of the Center for Health Care Organizations, Economics, and Financing at RAND Corporation.

Grant Miller, 2005 graduate, graduated cum laude from Yale College in 1995 with a BA in Psychology. After completing his undergraduate studies, he was a pre-doctoral fellow at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a research assistant at the University of California, San Francisco’s Institute for Health Policy Studies, and a research associate at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. He also received an MPP from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government before enrolling in the Health Policy Program. Grant’s research was at the intersection of international health and economic development and included 1) the impact of health improvement and population change on economic development, 2) the consequences of health care reforms in poor countries, and 3) approaches to stimulating private R&D on neglected tropical diseases. He was an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality trainee, a pre-doctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a graduate student fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Development. Grant is currently Assistant Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Melitta Jakab, 2007 graduate, graduated with distinction with a BA in Economics and Political Science from McGill University in 1995. Following graduation, she worked at the World Bank Resident Mission in Budapest. (Melitta is originally from Hungary and is fluent in four languages.) Melitta won a Fulbright Scholarship in 1997 and entered the SM program in Health Policy and Management at Harvard School of Public Health. While at HSPH, she worked for the Health Care Financing Group as a research assistant. In 1999 Melitta was awarded the Charles F. Wilinsky Award for Academic Achievement during the course of her MS work. After graduation, she returned to the World Bank as a Health Economist, where she wrote several publications on health financing. Melitta entered the PhD program in 2001 and defended her dissertation entitled, “An Empirical Evaluation of the Kyrgyz Health Reform: Does it Work for the Poor?” in spring 2007. She is currently Health Financing Specialist, Central Eastern Europe and Central Asia, World Health Organization EURO.

Sam Richardson, 4th year, graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with honors from Stanford University in 2002 with a BA in Human Biology and a minor in Economics. As an undergraduate, Sam participated extensively in health education programs, including those focusing on sexual health and smoking, and his thesis was a quantitative evaluation of Stanford's Peer Health Education program. After graduating, he worked as a research assistant at the VA Health Economics Resource Center, where his focus was a project examining end-of-life care in VA. Sam led two sub-studies within this project. The first investigated different methods for identifying cause of death when controlling for case mix at the end of life, and results were published in JAMA. The second analyzed differences in aggressiveness of end-of-life care between patients with and without dementia, and the paper was published in Health Services Research. Sam entered the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy in fall 2006, where his first two years were supported by an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality traineeship. Sam is currently funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Sam has been a Teaching Fellow for a PhD-level microeconomic theory course since fall 2007, and has won a Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching all four semesters he has taught the course. Sam is broadly interested in unintended consequences of health policy interventions; he plans to analyze, for example, how hospitals responded to California's new nurse staffing requirements, and the labor market implications. Sam presented his work on gaming and pay for performance in the United Kingdom on a panel at the American Society of Health Economists meeting at Duke University in June 2008. He is currently working on a paper about the economic theory of pay-for-performance programs.

Ethics

Jill Horwitz, 2002 graduate, holds a BA in History with honors from Northwestern University (1988), and an MPP (1994) and a JD magna cum laude (1997) from Harvard University. From 1997-98, she clerked for Judge Norman Stahl, US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. During her graduate studies, she worked as a summer associate and law clerk in the health care departments of Ropes & Gray and McDermott, Will & Emery. While at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, she was a summer associate in municipal finance at J.P. Morgan Securities. Prior to graduate school, Jill was Director of Public Affairs at Planned Parenthood of San Mateo County, and a Teaching Fellow in History at Phillips Academy. During the 2000-01 academic year she concurrently served as a Graduate Fellow at the Center for Ethics and the Professions and as a Hauser Center Fellow for Doctoral Studies in the Nonprofit Sector. Jill’s dissertation, for which she was awarded the 2003 AcademyHealth Dissertation Award, explored the behavioral, ethical, and legal implications of corporate organizational form of American hospitals. In addition, she has published on hospital conversions, medical malpractice tort reform, and Medicaid managed-care contracting. She is now the Louis and Myrtle Moskowitz Research Professor of Business and Law at University of Michigan Law School.

David Stevenson, 2004 graduate, received a BA in religion from Oberlin College in 1991 and an SM in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1997. David’s primary research interests are aging, disability, and long-term care. In particular, he is interested in the ethical implications of long-term care policy choices. David has conducted health policy and health services research in various settings, including the US Public Health Service, the University of Washington School of Public Health, the Urban Institute, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, and the MEDSTAT Group. His work has focused on state long-term care policy reform, access to health care for people with disabilities, and the use of cost-effectiveness research in setting policy priorities. His current work is focused on nursing home quality, and he recently completed a national survey of attorneys involved in nursing home malpractice. David was the recipient of a two-year training grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and a National Institute on Aging Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Aging and Health Economics. He is now Assistant Professor of Health Care Policy in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.

Susannah Rose, 4th year, graduated from Furman University in 1996 with a BA in Philosophy and Psychology. In 1998, she graduated with an MS in Social Work from Columbia University, and she received an MS in Bioethics from Albany Medical Center/Union College in 2006. She is currently a PhD candidate in the ethics concentration of Harvard’s Health Policy Program. Prior to her graduate work at Harvard, Ms. Rose provided psychosocial clinical services and conducted research for approximately eight years at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City. Susannah is the primary author on a book for family and friends of people with cancer and a co-author of another book about colorectal cancer. Ms. Rose has published and presented on many topics related to psychosocial oncology, to bioethics and to health policy. She co-wrote a paper entitled, “Disability, Adaptation, and Inclusion” with Professor Norman Daniels at Harvard School of Public Health, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2009. Under the mentorship of Dr. Steve Joffe at Dana Farber, Ms. Rose completed a study of the relationship between oncology clinical trial investigators’ roles and financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. She is currently investigating health policy topics related to patient advocacy groups, and she is writing a theoretical paper defining the use of preferences related to the Institute of Medicine’s definition of healthcare disparities (under the mentorship of Professor Tom McGuire, Harvard Medical School). Ms. Rose is a recipient of a predoctoral traineeship from the National Institute of Mental Health, she was a Graduate Fellow at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics during academic year 2008-2009, and she is a Pre-doctoral Fellow, Program in Cancer Outcomes Research Training (PCORT) Fellowship, Mass General Hospital (2008-2010).

Adriane Gelpi, 3rd year, Adriane Hunsberger Gelpi graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in March 2002 with an AB in History and Science and a certificate in Mind, Brain, Behavior studies. Her senior thesis, “Experimental Space and the Problem of Double Consciousness in Turn of the Century Boston,” won both a university-wide Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize and the departmental Rothschild Prize for best History of Science thesis. In the summer of 2001, she worked at a medical center and preschool in rural India. In fall 2004, Adriane began work as Editor and Project Manager for Science and Medicine, at Columbia University Digital Knowledge Ventures, where she led project teams to develop digital media. In fall 2005, while continuing to work full-time, Adriane began an MPH at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. In the summer of 2006, she traveled to Nairobi, Kenya to conduct policy analysis of Kenya’s malaria control programs at the UN Millennium Development Goals Centre. Adriane’s MPH thesis examined ethical issues in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Entering the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy in fall 2007, her current research interests include normative and empirical aspects of priority setting for public health and health system reform in developing countries. Since 2007, she has been working with Professor Norman Daniels on a project to implement a fair process for health policy decision making at the Mexican and Colombian Ministries of Health. She presented the work at the biennial conference of the International Society for Priority Setting in Health, where she was elected to the management committee of the society. Currently, Adriane is working with Dr. Linda Marc at the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research on a study to analyze the responsiveness of a psychometric scale used to evaluate symptom distress in HIV+ individuals. Adriane is the recipient of a traineeship from the National Institute of Mental Health, as well as the Graduate Prize Fellowship.

Evaluative Sciences and Statistics

Alyce Adams, 1999 graduate, received a BA from the University of Texas at Austin where she majored in Government. In 1994, she earned an MPP at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government where she wrote her master’s thesis entitled, “The Impact of the American Health Security Act on American Indians.” Following graduation from the Kennedy School and before entering the PhD Program in Health Policy, Alyce worked for one year as a health policy analyst for the Massachusetts Department of Health Care Finance and Policy. As a PhD student, she was the recipient of a three-year Graduate Prize Fellowship and an Agency for Healthcare Policy and Research training grant. She received a Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Summer Fellowship for her preliminary dissertation research regarding the transfer of health care management responsibility from the Indian Health Service to American Indian tribal government. In addition to her academic life, Alyce volunteered as a consultant for the North American Indian Center of Boston on their diabetes initiative. She was also a mentor to interns in the AHCPR Health Policy Summer Program for Minority Undergraduates in the summer of 1998.

Alyce completed the PhD Program in November 1999, and spent that year as an AHCPR Post-Doctoral Fellow. The three papers that formed her dissertation were “How Tribes Choose between Tribal and Indian Health Service Management of Health Care Resources,” “Drug Coverage and Drug Use by Medicare Beneficiaries,” and “Bias in Measures of Guideline Adherence.” Alyce is now is a Research Scientist at the Division of Research (DOR), Kaiser Permanente Northern California. Her work examines patient, physician, and policy-level determinants of disparities in health outcomes among insured populations.

John Lavis, 1997 graduate, a Canadian physician, holds a BA with distinction and an MD from Queen's University in Canada and an MSc with distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science. John has worked as a community hospital emergency room physician, prison physician, and HIV primary care physician in Ontario, Canada (1990-91); an advisor to the World Health Organization Global Programme on AIDS in Geneva, Switzerland (1992); a visiting research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, England (1992); a research fellow at the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (1992-97); a research fellow at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto, Ontario (1993-94); and a research fellow at the Institute for Work and Health in Toronto, Ontario (1995-97).

In 1994, John entered the PhD Program in Health Policy. For his doctoral studies, he was awarded a Fullbright Scholarship, a National Health PhD Fellowship from the Government of Canada, and a Doctoral Fellowship from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. In 1997, he completed his doctoral dissertation, entitled “An Inquiry into the Links Between Labour Market Experiences and Health.” Currently, John is Associate Professor, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Associate Member, Department of Political Science; Associate Research Director, Strategy, Institute for Work & Health; and Member, Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis at McMaster University. He is also Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Transfer and Uptake and Associate Professor, Department of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation, at the University of Toronto.

Connie Mah Trinacty, 2006 graduate, received a BA in Psychology from Amherst College in 1994. Following graduation, she worked as a project coordinator for clinical trials at the Stanford Medical School and Center for Health Care Evaluation at the Palo Alto Veterans Medical Center. She evaulated a technology-based chronic disease management intervention and examined its impact on patients’ health status and health care costs in public health care systems. In 1998, Connie began working at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (HPHC) and Harvard Medical School as a project director and analyst for two studies in drug policy. The first evaluated the impact of a triplicate prescription policy for benzodiazepines on the use of psychoactive drugs and other health services in two state Medicaid populations. The second examined the impact of coverage of home diabetes monitoring devices on blood glucose control and health services utilization in a managed care population. Connie returned to school to earn an SM in Health Policy and Management at Harvard School of Public Health in 2002. She then began the PhD Program in Health Policy and was the recipient of an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality traineeship. Her dissertation was entitled, “Evaluating Racial Differences in Quality of Diabetes Care and Self-Management Practice in an HMO,” and she is now Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.

Benjamin Cook, 2006 graduate, received a BA in Psychology from Swarthmore College in 1995. After graduation, he was awarded a Swarthmore College Fellowship, with which he designed and conducted a gang prevention program for recently immigrated Vietnamese youth in Northern Virginia. He then was granted a Fulbright Scholarship Teaching Assistantship in South Korea, where he taught English at a high school in the province of Chollonam-do and conducted research on Korean Buddhism. In 1999, Benjamin received an MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education at UNC-Chapel Hill, concentrating on immigrant and farmworker health access, and receiving the Kathy Kerr Memorial Award for demonstrating commitment to social justice and community health education practice. Benjamin moved to Boston to work with Health Care for All, coordinating the Covering Kids Massachusetts Initiative. His work there focused on statewide legislative advocacy and local program coordination to improve access to SCHIP and Medicaid-funded insurance programs for children in Massachusetts. As a PhD student in Health Policy, Benjamin was the recipient of an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality traineeship, a National Institute of Mental Health training grant, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship for Research in Managed Care. Benjamin was the recipient of the 2007 AcademyHealth Dissertation Award for his dissertation entitled, “Hunt for the Right Counterfactual: Non-Linear Adjustment in Minority Health Care Studies.” He is currently a Research Fellow at the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research at Cambridge Health Alliance and an Instructor at the Harvard Medical School. His research interests are in improving methods for measuring disparities, and applying these methods to understanding the mechanisms underlying mental health and substance abuse treatment disparities, the association between acculturation and mental health, and geographic differences in mental health service use disparities.

Aaka Pande, 3rd year, graduated with distinction from Yale University in 2002 majoring in Molecular Biology and International Studies. At Yale she volunteered at a community health project in rural Ghana, created a drug database for the Medicines for Malaria Venture in Geneva, and assisted with the design of Phase IV clinical trials for an antiretroviral drug at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals. She researched international health policy as a Fox International Fellow at Cambridge University, UK in 2003 and continued her study of international health as a master’s student at the Harvard School of Public Health from 2003-2005. She was awarded the departmental Master’s Thesis award and was a Presidential Scholar for both her years. From 2005-2007, she worked on Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) at the World Bank, focusing on health projects in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. She spent considerable time in the field creating monitoring systems, designing health surveys, conducting rapid appraisals, and organizing capacity building workshops. She was part of the team that was awarded the World Bank Good Practice in M&E award for 2007. Aaka began the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy in Fall 2007. She was awarded the Harvard Kennedy School's Deans Award for Excellence in Student Teaching for a course in Advanced Quantitative Methods. She will be conducting research on disparities in quality of care for patients with diabetes in Mexico at Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Institute, Department of Population Medicine. An Indian citizen, Aaka grew up in South Korea, Hong Kong, Bahrain and Bombay.

Management

Ingrid Nembhard, 2007 graduate, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University in 1997, with a BA in Ethics, Politics and Economics (EP&E) and in Psychology. Following graduation, she worked in the physician contracting department of a not-for-profit HMO in Florida, where she was involved in the development and implementation of a hospital admitting panel program, renegotiation of chemotherapy drug contracts, capitation programs and other projects. In 1999, she entered the Master of Science Program at the Harvard School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management. While completing her degree, Ingrid staffed Boston Mayor Menino’s Health Care Finance Task Force, and served as Director of Elderly Outreach Programs at East Boston Neighborhood Health Center. In the latter capacity, she designed and supervised a campaign to enroll low-income Medicare beneficiaries in Medicaid, Medicare Buy-in, and pharmacy programs. She presented her enrollment framework to representatives from the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Boston Public Health Commission, and at the National Conference of Community Health Centers 2001 Policy and Issues Forum (Washington, DC). At her graduation from Harvard School of Public Health in 2001, she was awarded the Gareth M. Green Award for Excellence in Public Health Practice and the Charles F. Wilinsky Award for Academic Achievement. Ingrid defended her dissertation entitled, “Organizational Learning in Health Care: Insights from a Multi-Method Study of Quality Improvement Collaboratives,” in 2007. Her paper was chosen as Best Paper Based on a Dissertation for the 2007 Health Care Management Division of the Academy of Management. Ingrid is now Assistant Professor at Yale School of Medicine and School of Public Health, as well as Yale School of Management.

Sara J. Singer, 2008 graduate, holds an AB in English from Princeton University (1986) and an MBA degree with a Certificate in Public Management from Stanford University. Before coming to Harvard, Sara was Founding Executive Director of the Center for Health Policy, Stanford University’s multidisciplinary home for rigorous and innovative health care and health policy research, and a Lecturer in Stanford’s Public Policy Program and in Stanford School of Medicine’s Department of Health Research and Policy. In 1997, she was Staff Director of the California Governor’s Managed Health Care Improvement Task Force. As Senior Legislative Assistant for Health Policy to the Honorable Mike Andrews (D-TX), Sara developed legislative strategy and an alternative health system reform proposal for moderate Democrats on the US House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee during the committee’s debate of the Health Security Act of 1994. In 1992, she was a health policy analyst in the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget. Sara is currently a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and co-principal investigator for a Stanford-based grant entitled, “Improving Safety Culture and Outcomes in Healthcare,” funded by the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She received her PhD from Harvard University, where she was a fellow at Harvard Business School and at the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government. Her dissertation paper, “Relationship of Safety Climate and Safety Performance in Hospitals,” was selected for the Best Paper Proceedings of the 2007 Academy of Management Meeting. Sara's research uses organizational safety, organizational learning, and leadership theories to understand and address the causes and consequences of errors and adverse events in health care organizations. She is now Assistant Professor of Healthcare Management and Policy at Harvard School of Public Health.

Jonathan Clark, 4th year, Jonathan Clark entered the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy in the fall of 2006. His research interests center on operations strategy and performance in the hospital industry. His dissertation investigates the impact of organizational scope on the cost and quality of hospital care and explores the implications of complexity for how organizations design operating systems. Additional work centers on “safety net” hospitals and the ways that managers of these organizations can maintain their missions while performing at a high level. Jonathan graduated cum laude from Boston College in 2001 with a BA in Economics. Following graduation he joined Deloitte & Touche as a consultant in the Healthcare practice of the company’s Management Solutions and Services. Jonathan’s work at Deloitte focused primarily on managed care risk contracts, providing services to a wide range of clients, including academic medical centers, community hospitals, and physician groups of all sizes. In 2003 he helped start iHealth Partners with several Deloitte colleagues. At iHealth Jonathan led the development of a risk contract audit system that helped provider organizations improve the financial performance of their risk contracts. Also in 2003, Jonathan entered the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) to pursue a Master of Science degree in Health Policy and Management. During this time he worked for HealthEquity, a consumer driven healthcare start-up, where he served as Director of Research and Strategic Planning. After graduating from HSPH in June 2005, Jonathan accepted an appointment as a Research Associate with Professor Nancy Kane at HSPH. His research with Professor Kane focused on hospital governance, with a specific interest in the relationship between board processes and hospital performance.

Medical Sociology

Cara James, 2006 graduate, received an AB in Psychology from Harvard College in 1998. As an undergraduate, she spent a year working as a research assistant at Georgetown University Medical School on spinal cord injury and recovery research, which led to publications in Advances in Neurology and the FASEB Journal. Cara returned to Harvard and received the Harvard Eating Disorders Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship to assist in the completion of her undergraduate thesis on eating disorders. After graduation, she worked as a research assistant for The Picker Institute, a non-profit survey research institute located in Boston. She worked as a summer intern for the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Cara’s research interests include quality of care and racial and ethnic health disparities. Her dissertation research focused on improving the quality of care that patients with end-stage renal disease receive, and she was the recipient of a five-year fellowship in Health Policy and Research from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Cara was co-author of a chapter in a 2002 Institute of Medicine Report, “The Culture of Medicine and Racial, Ethnic and Class Disparities in Health Care,” Unequal treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. She is now Senior Policy Analyst for Race/Ethnicity and Health Care and Director of the Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Hector Rodriguez, 2007 graduate, holds a BA in Urban Studies and Planning from the University of California, San Diego (1996) and an MPH in Health Policy and Administration from the University of California, Berkeley (1998). Before entering Harvard's PhD program in Health Policy, he served as Senior Consultant and Information Manager for the Permanente Medical Group, Inc. in northern California. In this role, he managed several complex business redesign projects including the transition of appointment and medical advice functions from medical offices into large call centers and the integration of ancillary providers onto adult primary care teams. Hector also served as a consultant to physician leaders on improving primary care appointment accessibility and provider-patient familiarity. In addition to department and project management, he authored an internal study within the medical group that evaluated the effectiveness of several interventions to improve the cultural competencies of providers and staff. Hector has also served as a program evaluation consultant to HIV/AIDS organizations, including AIDS Project of the East Bay and the Alameda County Office of AIDS and Communicable Diseases. As a PhD student, he worked for the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School, where he assisted with a cost analysis for the evaluation of academic detailing interventions to improve medication prescribing among primary care physicians. He also worked with the Health Institute, Institute of Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, Tufts-New England Medical Center, on the evaluation of various quality improvement initiatives in primary care settings. His research interests include better understanding the role of continuity of care as a predictor of health outcomes and patient ratings of their care experience, the role of trust in the PCP-patient relationship, and the impact of labor-management partnerships in improving quality and efficiency in health care environments. Hector is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Services at the UCLA School of Public Health .

Andrea Ault, 5th year, Andrea Ault-Brutus graduated with honors from the University of Miami in 1996 with a BBA in Marketing. From 1996-2001, Andrea worked as a consultant with Accenture where she helped organizations in the healthcare sector and other industries improve their service delivery capabilities. Upon leaving Accenture, Andrea pursued post-baccalaureate study in clinical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She then obtained a MPA with a focus in Health Policy and Management from New York University. During that time, Andrea worked at the Center for the Study of Issues in Public Mental Health where she was a two time recipient of a Minority Supplement Grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Her research under the Supplements included examining factors that influence the decision of homeless mothers to seek mental health services and examining how organizational factors influence the working alliance between homeless mothers and caseworkers. In fall 2005, Andrea entered the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy, where she was a recipient of a NIMH traineeship and a Harvard Graduate Prize Fellowship. Her research focuses on examining racial and ethnic disparities in mental healthcare and examining barriers to mental healthcare faced by people of color. While at Harvard, Andrea worked at the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research where she was involved in research examining the mental healthcare experience of patients during the recent health reform in Massachusetts. Andrea was a 2008 Summer Fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

Sae Takada, 2nd year, graduated from Harvard College in 2003 with an AB in Biochemistry. As an undergraduate, Sae directed a student-run homeless shelter and became interested in social disparities and wellbeing. She started a program to encourage homeless people’s social reintegration through recreation. After graduation, Sae pursued Master’s research at the University of Tokyo School of International Health, where she worked with the Laotian Ministry of Health, Japan International Cooperation Agency, WHO, and UNICEF to assess the implementation of two child health programs in Lao PDR. Sae was intrigued by how Laotian social norms and health practices, which were sometimes at odds with Western expectations, influenced the success of the programs. She also loved working with Laotian health workers and mothers in mountain villages, and decided to pursue medicine. Having completed the first half of HMS, Sae has been exposed to the quirks of the America medical system and the challenges of caring for an increasingly obese country. While in the PhD program, Sae hopes to gain the tools for quantifying the impact of social ties on health behavior, and apply them to programs that promote the health of underserved populations in the US and abroad.

Political Analysis

Mollyann Brodie, 1995 graduate, is the first graduate of the PhD Program in Health Policy. In 1988 she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BS in Kinesiology from UCLA. In June 1992, she received an SM in Health Policy and Management from Harvard School of Public Health. While at HSPH, she was a 1991 and 1992 recipient of the Charles F. Wilinsky Award for Academic Excellence. Mollyann worked as a health policy and program analyst in the Inspector General Office, US Department of Health and Human Services where she won a special achievement award in 1990. She was the recipient of the Aetna Health Plan Fellowship through the PhD Program in Health Policy, and is the program's first Harvard Merit Award winner. She has co-authored numerous journal articles, and is co-editing a book, On the Brink of Reform, with Professor Robert Blendon. The title of her dissertation was “Political Institutions, Participation and Media Evaluations: Influences on Health Care Policy.” Mollyann is now Vice President and Director of Public Opinion and Media Research for the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. This position enables her to continue her research interests in exploring the relationship among public opinion, the media, and political institutions.

Sara Bleich, 2007 graduate, received a BA in Psychology from Columbia University in 2000. Following graduation she worked as a Research Associate at The Measurement Group in Los Angeles where her work focused on content analyses, data mining, and program evaluation in the areas of HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, and mental health. Sara enrolled in Harvard's PhD Program in Health Policy in fall 2002. Following her first year of graduate school, she participated in RAND's Summer Associate Program, developing a model to understand the relationship between political commitment and HIV/AIDS outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. For two years, Sara was a Teaching Fellow for a course called “Political Analysis and Strategy for US Health Care Policy” and Head Teaching Fellow for a course called “Global Health Challenges.” She was also a Research Assistant at the Harvard Initiative for Global Heath, where she researched the responsiveness of health care systems in developed and developing countries. Her dissertation research focused on understanding the determinants of obesity in developed countries; unmet need for diabetic and hypertensive health care services in Mexico; and public trust in scientific advice related to obesity. She is the past recipient of an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality traineeship, a Harvard Graduate Prize Fellowship, and a GSAS dissertation completion fellowship. She is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She also holds a secondary appointment in the Department of International Health.

Sara Abiola, 5th year, graduated with distinction from Yale University in 2003 with a BA in Psychology and International Studies. Sara's undergraduate thesis focused on varying levels of susceptibility to stereotype threat among college students from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Prior to graduating, Sara participated in the Harvard Medical School Health Policy Summer Program, during which she conducted qualitative research in Boston's low-income housing communities as part of a colorectal cancer intervention being developed by the Center for Community-Based Research at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Upon graduating from Yale, Sara began her studies at Harvard Law School, where she focused on the use of international human rights language to increase access of underserved communities to healthcare, the judicial system's role in shaping past and present healthcare institutions, and how the US political process is influenced by legal decisions and theories. As a research assistant for the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, she analyzed current and prospective legal approaches to addressing racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare with a focus on Title VI compliance as basis for receipt of federal funds. During the summer following her first year of law school, Sara worked as a research assistant at the Harvard School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management, where she developed a legal framework to analyze how public reporting of individual physician performance may impact medical malpractice liability. Sara also researched and categorized judicial interpretation of epidemiological and scientific evidence relevant to medical causation in toxic tort litigation. As a summer associate in the Washington, DC office of Clifford Chance LLP, Sara worked on cases in several practice areas, including project finance, securities, and international white-collar regulatory. Sara joined the Coordinated JD/PhD Program in Health Policy in the fall of 2005 and graduated from the Law School with her JD in June 2007. Sara is interested in studying public opinion and health policy in developing countries and the politics of public health law. She was previously the recipient of an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality traineeship.

John Connolly, 4th year, graduated with honors from the University of Chicago in 2003 with an AB in Political Science. Upon graduating, John received the Howell Murray Alumni Association Award for outstanding contributions to student life and the university community, the highest honor given to graduating seniors. He was also inducted into the Maroon Key Society, the college’s honor society for students who display outstanding scholarship and leadership. While an undergraduate, he spent a term studying African civilizations and history in South Africa, and his AB thesis examined the politics of race and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Following graduation, John spent two years as a member of Teach for America, a corps of recent college graduates that commits two years to teaching in underserved schools. While with Teach for America, John served as a middle school special education teacher in New York City and completed a Master of Science in Education from Bank Street College in 2005. His master’s thesis investigates the ways in which educators can holistically address the academic, social, and emotional needs of children through experiential learning. After completing his Teach for America commitment, John began coursework for a Master of Public Policy (MPP) at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In fall 2006, John left the MPP program at the Kennedy School to enter the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy. During the summers of 2006 and 2007, he served as a research intern in the public opinion and media research group at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and coauthored four book chapters on American public opinion on healthcare costs, quality of healthcare, racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, and HIV/AIDS, which are scheduled for publication in 2009. He now serves as a research assistant for the Harvard Opinion Research Program at the Harvard School of Public Health, and his current work focuses on public opinion on healthcare reform in the United States and the special challenges of vulnerable populations in disaster and pandemic preparedness. He is the recipient of a traineeship from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.