Notes on Contributors

John Z. Ayanian is an associate professor of medicine and health care policy at Harvard Medical School and a practicing internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he sees patients, teaches medical residents, and directs the General Internal Medicine Fellowship. His research focuses on access to care, quality of care, and outcomes of major medical conditions, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and end-stage renal disease. He has studied differences in care by patient gender, race, and insurance coverage and by physician specialty and hospital volume and teaching status.

David Blumenthal is director of the Institute for Health Policy, Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners HealthCare System in Boston, and professor of medicine and of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. He is also director of the Harvard University Interfaculty Program on Health Systems Improvement. His interests include the future of academic health centers, relationships between academia and industry, physician behavior, and the organization and financing of primary care.

Neal Halfon is a professor in the Schools of Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities. He is also a member of the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. His primary research interests include developmental services to young children, access to care, and delivery of health services to children with special health care needs. He is editor of Child Rearing in America: Challenges Facing Families with Young Children (Cambridge University Press, 2002). He also co-chairs the Health Services Workgroup for the planned National Children’s Study of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Miles Hochstein is assistant director of the National Center for Infancy and Early Childhood Health Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. His recent research has explored the education and counseling of parents in pediatric office settings. He is currently studying the use of information systems by social welfare, health, and educational organizations to support human development. He maintains a particular interest in the study of “alternative” nonviolent approaches to education and human development with an emphasis on social conflict resolution and parent involvement.

C. Montagne is the pseudonym of a professor of economics at a large public university. His research interests include health care costs under managed care and cost-benefit analyses of substance abuse treatment. By agreement with the editor, neither he nor his institution is being identified in light of the confidential nature of the contractual negotiations discussed in his article.

Toni Terling Watt is an assistant professor of sociology at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. Her research focuses on child and adolescent health, with an emphasis on evaluation of policies and programs for children and youth. Recent publications address issues such as child abuse and neglect and the efficacy of child protection, race and gender differences in adolescent suicide, and long-term effects of parental substance abuse on children.

Joel S. Weissman is an assistant professor at the Institute for Health Policy, Harvard Medical School/Massachusets General Hospital in Boston. His main research interests lie in the areas of health care financing, the effects of competition on health system behavior, access to care, and measurement issues associated with access, quality of care, and risk adjustment. For the last six years he has served as project director for the Commonwealth Fund Task Force on Academic Health Centers. In addition, he is leading research projects on the relation of hospital crowding to medical errors, the public health effects of direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs, and how hospitals are progressing in their efforts to disclose medical errors to patients.

Esther I. Wilder is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Work at Lehman College, City University of New York. Her research focuses on disability, access to health care, adolescent reproductive behavior, and fertility and contraceptive use. She is currently completing an in-depth study of social adjustment among individuals with spinal cord injury.