Notes on Contributors

Jennifer Ahern is an assistant professor in the Division of Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. She holds a PhD.

Erin Bakshis is a graduate student at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She holds an MPH.

Tanya G.K. Bentley is a research scientist at UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research and an adjunct health analyst at the RAND Corporation. She has specific training in decision-analytic methods for health policy and recently completed an AHRQ post-doctoral fellowship in health services research at RAND. Her research focuses on enhancing health care policy, intervention, and treatment decisions for disease prevention and health promotion through the efficient allocation of resources. Bentley’s recent work includes evaluating and quantifying economic and health-related waste in the U.S. health care system; conceptualizing and developing a large microsimulation model to estimate lifetime social and economic costs of illicit drug use in the United States; and evaluating event-history bias in Markov cohort models. She received a PhD from Harvard University.

Naihua Duan is professor of biostatistics (in psychiatry) at Columbia University, research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and director of the Division of Biostatistics and Data Coordination in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He received an MA in mathematical statistics from Columbia University and a PhD in statistics from Stanford University. He is a biostatistician with research interests in health services research, prevention research, sample design and experimental design, model robustness, transformation models, multilevel modeling, nonparametric and semiparametric regression methods, and environmental exposure assessment. He is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

Rachel M. Effros is a member of the adjunct staff at RAND Corporation and has participated extensively in the COMPARE project, a project evaluating health care reform proposals for the upcoming presidential election. Effros completed her residency training in pediatrics and practiced general pediatrics for several years before turning to health services research. She has a particular interest in health care delivery systems, access to care, and quality. When not at RAND, she splits her time between clinical care and utilization review. She received an MD from Emory University School of Medicine and an MPH from UCLA.

Sandro Galea is a professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health and a research professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. He holds an MD and a DrPH.

Sarah E. Gollust is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She recently completed her PhD in health services organization and policy at the University of Michigan. Her current research addresses the roles of the media and public opinion in public health policy. She has also published on ethical issues in public health, the incorporation of genetic testing into health practice, and mental health services and policy. Before obtaining her PhD, she worked as a research fellow in the Department of Bioethics and the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health.

M. Cameron Hay is assistant professor of anthropology at Miami University (Ohio) and assistant research anthropologist at the Center for Culture and Health, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a medical and psychological anthropologist interested in how medical knowledge impacts clinical communication, illness experience, and everyday health management.

Rodney A. Hayward is director of the VA Ann Arbor Health Services Research & Development (HSR&D) Center of Excellence and professor of internal medicine and public health at the University of Michigan. An overarching theme of his work focuses on encouraging improvements in health care quality and efficiency through more detailed assessments of the heterogeneity in treatment benefits within populations and by developing more sophisticated performance measures and market incentives. He holds an MD.

Matthew R. Jones is a graduate student at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He holds an MPH.

Emmett B. Keeler is a senior mathematician at RAND Corporation and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School and the UCLA School of Public Health, where he teaches cost-effectiveness and decision analysis. He led the Childbirth Outcomes project and the Improving Chronic Illness Care Evaluation. In the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, he studied the effects of alternative insurance plans on physiological health and the costs of episodes of treatment. The resulting microsimulation model has been used to study spending and insurance choice. He was the 2003 Distinguished Investigator of AcademyHealth and is a member of the Institute of Medicine. He received a PhD from Harvard University.

Richard L. Kravitz is professor of internal medicine at the University of California, Davis. He is a general internist and health services researcher interested in patient-centered care and the contributions that patients, physicians, and systems can make to quality of care. Current projects focus on accounting for heterogeneity of treatment effects in clinical research and improving the delivery of primary care for patients with comorbid physical and mental health conditions.

Edmund J. Niedzinski is assistant professor of chemistry at American River College. After receiving his PhD from the University of California, Davis, he worked at Genteric, Inc., a small biotechnology company focusing on the early stage development of novel drug delivery methods. He briefly returned to UC Davis to work with the Center for Health Services Research and is now at American River College, developing basic skills courses for students pursuing allied health careers.

Gilbert S. Omenn is professor of internal medicine, human genetics, and public health and director of the UM Center for Computational Medicine & Biology at the University of Michigan. He was executive vice president for medical affairs and chief executive officer of the UM Health System from 1997 to 2002. He was dean of the School of Public Health and professor of medicine and environmental health at the University of Washington from 1982 to 1997. His research interests include cancer proteomics, chemoprevention of cancers, public health genetics, computational biology, science-based risk analysis, health policy, and biomedical ethics. Omenn is the author of 439 research papers and reviews and author/editor of 18 books.

Kartika Palar is a doctoral fellow in policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, specializing in health policy. Her current research focuses on chronic disease prevention and treatment in the United States and abroad, including analyzing the costs and benefits of using food policy as a mechanism to prevent and mitigate the impact of chronic disease on the population level.

Steven A. Schroeder is Distinguished Professor of Health and Health Care in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he also heads the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center. Between 1990 and 2002 he was president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Schroeder graduated with honors from Stanford University and Harvard Medical School and trained in internal medicine at the Harvard Medical Service of Boston City Hospital and in epidemiology as an EIS Officer of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He has held faculty appointments at Harvard, George Washington, and UCSF. At both George Washington and UCSF he was founding medical director of a university-sponsored HMO, and at UCSF he founded its division of general internal medicine. He has published extensively in the fields of clinical medicine, health care financing and organization, prevention, public health, the work force, and tobacco control. He currently serves as chair of the International Advisory Committee of the Ben Gurion School of Medicine, is a member of the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine, and is a director of the James Irvine Foundation, the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, and the Robina Foundation. He has six honorary doctoral degrees and numerous awards.

Saskia K. Subramanian is an assistant research sociologist at the UCLA Center for Culture and Health as well as a visiting assistant professor in the UCLA Women’s Studies Department. Subramanian received her AB and MA from Bryn Mawr College and her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the recipient of two major grants from the Susan G. Komen Foundation. The co-author of After the Cure: The Untold Stories of Breast Cancer Survivors, she is also the producer of the feature length documentary film Beyond Breast Cancer: Stories of Survivors, which will be screened at the 2008 Baltimore Women’s Film Festival.

Sandeep Vijan is a physician-investigator at the VA Ann Arbor HSR&D Center of Excellence and an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. His primary research interest is in the use of epidemiologic and simulation modeling methodologies to optimize the efficiency of health care delivery. In particular, he is interested in approaches to risk stratification that can maximize the benefit and minimize the risk of preventive interventions. He holds an MD and an MS.

Kenneth E. Warner is dean and Avedis Donabedian Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and director of the University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network. He has been on the school’s faculty since 1972. An economist, Warner has focused his research on the impacts of tobacco policies. Recently he served as the World Bank’s representative to negotiations on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the world’s first-ever global health treaty. Warner was a founding member of the board of directors of the American Legacy Foundation and served as president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco in 2004–05.

Thomas S. Weisner is a professor of anthropology in the Departments of Psychiatry (Center for Culture and Health, Semel Institute) and Anthropology at UCLA. He has a BA from Reed College and a PhD from Harvard University. He is director of the Fieldwork and Qualitative Data Laboratory at the UCLA Mental Retardation Research Center. He is the co-author of Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and Their Children (Russell Sage Foundation, 2007) (with Greg Duncan and Aletha Huston); co-editor of Making It Work: Low-Wage Employment, Family Life and Child Development (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006) (with Hiro Yoshikawa and Edward Lowe); and editor of Discovering Successful Pathways in Children’s Development: New Methods in the Study of Childhood and Family Life(University of Chicago Press, 2005).

Donna M. Zulman is a fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Program at the University of Michigan. She obtained her MD at UCLA and completed her residency in internal medicine at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include chronic disease management and improving care for older adults in the primary care setting.