Notes on Contributors

Sheena Asthana is professor of health policy in the School of Sociology, Politics and Law at the University of Plymouth. Her research interests include health care equity, health inequalities and evidence-based public health, health resource allocation, and partnership working in health and social care. Her recent publications include What Works in Tackling Health Inequalities? Pathways, Policies and Practice through the Lifecourse (Policy Press). Asthana received her BA from the University of Oxford and her PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Troyen A. Brennan is chief medical officer at Aetna.

Kevin Campbell is a research manager in the Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse of the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services in Olympia. His research has focused on analyzing the impact of substance abuse treatment in vulnerable populations. He has also studied the effects of policy and program changes for substance abuse treatment within the SSI program.

Vicki A. Freedman is a professor in the Department of Health Systems and Policy at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the implications of population aging for disability and long-term care, with an emphasis on the causes and consequences of trends in late-life health and functioning. Freedman is a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Disability in America and previously served as director of Polisher Research Institute, a private, nonprofit gerontological research organization. She earned a doctorate in chronic disease epidemiology from Yale University and a master’s degree in demography from Georgetown University.

Joyce Halliday is a Research Council UK Fellow in Rural Health in the School of Sociology, Politics and Law at the University of Plymouth. Her research focuses on rural service delivery, resource allocation, partnership working, and health inequalities. Halliday received her MA from the University of Oxford and her PhD from the University of Wales.

Nancy Hodgson is a senior research scientist at the Polisher Research Institute. The emphasis of her program of research is the examination of factors associated with health-related quality of life in chronically ill older adults and the enhancement of science-based nursing practice at the end of life.

Embry M. Howell is a principal research associate with the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center. She has a PhD in public policy from George Washington University. Howell’s research interests include maternal and child health policy, the health care safety net, Medicaid, and the role of community-based nonprofits. Through the years she has used both qualitative and quantitative research methods to address these issues.

Dana Hughes has twenty-nine years of experience in the field of health policy and health policy research. The majority of her work has focused on issues related to children’s access to health care, examining programs and policies on the federal, state, and local levels. Currently, she is an associate professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco. Her work includes monitoring trends in children’s health insurance coverage, examining barriers to insurance and health services, and disparities in health and health care use. Hughes earned a DrPH from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a master’s in public health and a master’s in urban planning from Columbia University.

Allen B. Kachalia is an academic hospitalist in the Division of General Medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. His current work includes teaching and patient care on the General Medical Wards and acting as the associate medical director of the Brigham & Women’s Physician Organization. His research and academic interests include patient safety, medical malpractice reform, and legal issues in medicine. Kachalia holds an MD and a JD.

Antoinette Krupski is research administrator in the Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse of the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services in Olympia. She has managed a large number of studies in Washington State to examine the impact of substance abuse treatment on costs and client outcomes. The client groups Krupski has studied include pregnant women, SSI recipients, clients with dual diagnoses, and clients committed involuntarily to treatment.

Joanne Lynn, a senior natural scientist with RAND, works to improve care for persons facing serious, eventually fatal, chronic illness (http://www.MediCaring.org). For thirty years, she attended nursing home, home, and hospice patients. She received her MD from Boston University and was professor of medicine at Dartmouth and George Washington Universities and led the SUPPORT project. Lynn has anchored a dozen quality improvement collaboratives. Her publications include Handbook for Mortals, a book for the public;Improving Care for the End of Life, a guide to quality improvement for managers and clinicians; and Sick to Death and Not Going to Take It Anymore!, a guide to policy reform for the last years of life.

David Mancuso is a health economist and senior research manager with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, Research and Data Analysis Division. He has a PhD in economics from Stanford University. His current research is focused on quasi-experimental evaluation of a wide range of health policy interventions.

Michelle M. Mello is associate professor of Health Policy and Law in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. She holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhD in health policy and administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an M.Phil. from Oxford University, where she was a Marshall Scholar, and a BA from Stanford University. Mello conducts empirical research into issues at the intersection of law, ethics, and health policy. She is currently a Greenwall Faculty Scholar in bioethics and serves as director of the Program in Law and Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Brenda C. Spillman is a health economist and senior research associate at the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. Her research is primarily in the areas of trends in old-age disability and use and cost of long-term care. Current projects examine the use of assistive devices, choice of residential care settings, formal and informal caregiving, and risk and amount of disability and long-term care in the elderly population.

Kenneth D. Stark is the director of the Mental Health Transformation Project in Washington State. Before this position, he was director of the state’s Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse, a position he held for over seventeen years. Stark has extensive clinical and management experience in the alcohol and drug treatment field, including outpatient, residential, and hospital-based services. He has worked in public and private pay environments serving youth and adults. Over the years, Stark has been involved with numerous research projects and has been a consultant nationally. He has a master’s degree in education as well as in business administration.

David M. Studdert is associate professor of law and public health at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he teaches courses in health law and medical ethics. His research focuses on legal and regulatory issues in the health care sector. Studdert holds advanced degrees in law, public health, and health policy.

Timothy Waidmann is a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. He is interested in the economics and demography of disability; the ethnic and socioeconomic patterns of chronic and disabling conditions; and the effects of chronic disease and disability on work behavior, health care utilization, and economic well-being.

Thomas M. Wickizer is a professor in the Department of Health Services at the University of Washington. His training is in health economics and health policy. He has conducted studies in the areas of managed care, quality improvement, occupational health, community-based prevention programs, and substance abuse. Currently his research focuses on evaluation of quality improvement programs in occupational health care and of substance abuse treatment programs. In 2005 Wickizer received the John M. Eisenberg award for the best article published in the journal Health Services Research.

Anne M. Wilkinson is a senior social and behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation, in Washington, D.C. She is also director of the Palliative Care Policy Center, a clinical improvement and health policy research program affiliated with RAND, with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston, and with the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) in Alexandria, Virginia. Wilkinson has twenty years of aging research and program management, aging and health policy analysis, and social and health service program evaluation experience. Wilkinson’s research has involved measuring the impact of social and health services interventions for elderly persons and their caregivers, advanced chronic illness and the end of life, and long-term-care policy and practice. She holds a PhD in urban studies and public policy.

Douglas A. Wolf is the Gerald B. Cramer Professor of Aging Studies at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University. His research interests include the roles of family and of public policy in shaping the living and care arrangements of the elderly, the consequences of being a care provider, and the measurement and modeling of disability at older ages. He has also worked on the development of microsimulation techniques for projecting population composition, kin networks, and active life expectancy.