Notes on Contributors

Steven M. Albert is professor of public health in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. He received a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago and an MS in epidemiology from Columbia University. Albert’s research focuses on cognitive impairment and its impact on health. He has recently investigated Medicaid-funded personal assistance care for older adults and begun a series of studies designed to understand patient and family decision making in chronic neurologic disease. Albert is principal investigator for two NIH-funded projects and has also served as principal investigator in CDC and NSF projects as well as private foundation efforts.

Gloria J. Bazzoli is professor of health administration with Virginia Commonwealth University. She conducts economic research on U.S. hospital operations and financing as well as the functioning of hospital markets. Bazzoli has been a lead investigator in several research projects, including studies of financial pressures affecting the hospital safety net, relationships between hospital financial conditions and the quality of hospital care, and the effects of hospital mergers and closures on markets. She is also a senior consulting researcher with the Center for Studying Health System Change and in this capacity is examining the issue of changing U.S. hospital capacity and its implications for consumers and health markets. Bazzoli holds a PhD in economics from Cornell University.

Amanda Beatty is a program officer for monitoring and evaluation in the Accountability Division at the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a government agency that encourages poverty reduction through economic growth. Prior to joining MCC, Beatty worked at the RAND Corporation, where she served as a technical adviser, consultant, evaluator, grant maker, and researcher focusing on projects in areas of international health and education. She holds a master’s in public administration in international development from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and a BA in international affairs from George Washington University.

Jan Blustein is an associate professor of health policy at New York University’s Wagner School, where she teaches courses in statistics, program evaluation, and research methods. Her research focuses on the dynamics underlying differences in health and health care among older Americans with chronic illnesses. Blustein has been the principal investigator in studies of the impact of cardiac service availability on service use, and on the relationship between the Medicare benefit and health service equity. She is currently working on an evaluation of a national initiative to improve inpatient and post-discharge cardiac care in hospitals that disproportionately serve minority Americans. She holds an MD from Yale University and a PhD from the Wagner School at New York University.

Linda R. Brewster is an independent health research consultant, who provided research assistance to the Center for Studying Health System Change during three rounds of site visits. At HSC, her research focused on examining changes in hospitals’ strategic behavior, particularly with respect to integrating physicians. Prior to her work at HSC, Brewster held leadership positions in several hospital-sponsored physician integration organizations. She was also executive director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Health Plan and Medical Department. Brewster received an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.

Thomas W. Croghan is a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., where his research focuses on improving the quality of health and mental health care for the disabled. Before joining MPR, he worked at the RAND Corporation and at Eli Lilly and Company. His research has focused on access, quality, and affordability of mental health services; disparities; mental health policy; pharmaceutical policy; and international health. Croghan received his MD from West Virginia University School of Medicine.

David A. Gould is the senior vice president for program at the United Hospital Fund, where he has been responsible for oversight of its research, policy analysis, grant making, and convening activities for the past twenty years. He received his BA and MA from Columbia University and his PhD in American history from Brandeis University.

Jessica Greene is an assistant professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon. Her current work examines racial and ethnic disparities, patients’ roles in managing their health and health care, and the influence of consumer-directed health initiatives in the public and private sectors. Greene holds an MPH from Columbia University and a PhD from New York University.

Deborah E. Halper has a master’s in public health and a master’s in science in urban planning from Columbia University. As the current vice president and the director of the Division of Education and Program Initiatives at the United Hospital Fund, she is responsible for the development, management, and implementation of the fund’s grant making activities, including special initiatives on primary care and nursing homes, and other initiatives. Halper is also responsible for larger program initiatives on palliative care, aging in place, and family caregiving. She is the codirector of the Palliative Care Quality Improvement Collaborative, which engages a broad range of providers to improve palliative care. Halper is also responsible for a range of convening activities, including the design of conferences, invitational meetings, and other educational programs. Prior to coming to the fund, she worked as a senior planning associate, DRG coordinator, and administrator for clinical resources at Mount Sinai Medical Center.

Andrea Y. Hart joined the United Hospital Fund in November 2000 as a program associate in the Education and Program Initiatives Division. She is responsible for managing and coordinating programmatic and research activities for the Families and Health Care Project. Hart received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Alene Hokenstad is a project director in the Division of Policy Analysis at the United Hospital Fund. She is lead author of a series of data reports drawn from one of the few available studies of New York City’s Medicaid personal care population. The goal of her most recent project, “Connecting Care Systems,” is to demonstrate that modest changes in policy and practice can dramatically improve the number of home care recipients with depression who receive mental health treatment. Prior to her current appointment, Hokenstad served as deputy assistant director for health and human services for the Mayor’s Office of Operations in New York City. She earned a master of science degree in social administration from the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences in Cleveland, Ohio.

Sylvia Kuo is an investigator for the Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research at Brown University. Kuo is a health economist whose research interests center on quality and the appropriate use of care, the role of supply-side variations in access to care, and changes in the provider marketplace. She is currently a coinvestigator on a grant funded by BlueCross and BlueShield of Rhode Island to provide health services research support for issues such as duplication of coronary procedures, inappropriate use of antibiotics among children with otitis media, and the outcomes and sustainability of warfarin compliance.

Carol Levine directs the Families and Health Care Project at the United Hospital Fund in New York City. This project focuses on developing partnerships between health care professionals and family caregivers. As a senior staff associate of the Hastings Center, she edited the Hastings Center Report. In 1993 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for her work in AIDS policy and ethics. She edited the second edition of Always on Call: When Illness Turns Families into Caregivers and co-edited with Thomas H. Murray The Cultures of Caregiving: Conflict and Common Ground among Families, Health Professionals, and Policy Makers. She received a BA in history from Cornell University and an MA from Columbia University in public law and government.

Jessica H. May is a health research analyst at the Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington DC. She conducts research primarily on hospital and physician issues as part of HSC’s Community Tracking Study. May’s recent work has included studies of hospital nurse staffing shortages, physician pay-for-performance, and charity care provision by physicians.

Evan M. Melhado has long worked with colleagues in the Medical Humanities and Social Sciences Program at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign to provide for advanced medical students a pioneering clerkship on the social and cultural aspects of medicine, health care, and health policy. He has also had a long-standing role in supporting and governing the University of Illinois Medical Scholars Program, an MD/PhD program that includes many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. As a historian of science and medicine, he has written about the history of the physical sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and about the development of American health care policy since the early twentieth century. Melhado received a PhD in history from Princeton University.

Aviva Ron is a consultant in health policy and social health insurance and a staff member of the RAND Corporation. She has worked in the World Health Organization’s International Cooperation Office in Geneva, providing technical support to developing countries on health care financing, and served as director for Health Sector Development of the Western Pacific Regional Office in Manila. Prior to joining WHO, she was director of planning and information in the head office of the Health Insurance Institution of the General Federation of Labour in Israel. Ron was also a social security specialist in the South-East Asia and Pacific Team of the International Labour Organization and a consultant on social health insurance for the Social Security Department. Ron holds an ScD from Johns Hopkins University.

Beth C. Weitzman is professor of health and public policy and director of doctoral studies at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Her research focuses on urban policies affecting poor families. Since 1995, Weitzman has been directing the national evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Urban Health Initiative, aimed at improving health and safety outcomes for children and youth. In recent years, Weitzman’s work has been published in the Journal of Urban Health, theJournal of Adolescent Health, and the American Journal of Evaluation. She holds a BA from Vassar College and an MPA and PhD from New York University.