Notes on Contributors

Jean Marie Abraham is an assistant professor in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota. She holds a PhD in public policy and management from Carnegie Mellon University. Her research interests include access and cost of health insurance, consumer awareness and use of information in decision making, competition in health care markets, and efficiency and quality of care delivery. For the academic year 2008–2009, she served as senior economist on health issues on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in Washington, DC. In that role, she actively participated in the development of the Obama administration’s policy positions relating to health care reform.

James P. Bagian is a professor in the Departments of Industrial Engineering and Anesthesia, and chief patient safety and systems innovation officer at the University of Michigan. He is also a colonel in the U.S. Air Force. From 1999 to 2010 he served as the founding director of the National Center for Patient Safety and the first chief patient safety officer at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He was a NASA astronaut from 1980 to 1995 and flew on two space shuttle missions as well as served on both the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle mishap investigations. He received a degree in mechanical engineering from Drexel University and a medical degree from Thomas Jefferson University, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine.

Duncan Chambers is a research fellow in the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York, United Kingdom. He works on the TRiP-LaB project (Translating Research into Practice in Leeds and Bradford), a research partnership to promote the uptake of research evidence into practice in the English National Health Service. His main research interests relate to ways of summarizing and repackaging systematic review evidence with other relevant data (for example, cost-effectiveness, effects on equity, ease of implementation) in the most useful format for decision makers.

Katherine Farley is a research fellow in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York, United Kingdom (UK). She works on the TRiP-LaB project (Translating Research into Practice in Leeds and Bradford), a research partnership to promote the uptake of research evidence into practice in the English National Health Service. Her research interests are health practitioner behavior change and the implementation of innovation in health care contexts. Previous research includes social policy relating to cross-community relations and processes of ethnic segregation. She has a PhD in sociology from Durham University, UK, and a master’s degree in social research methods from Bristol University, UK.

Christopher B. Forrest is professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of the University of Pennsylvania. His academic focus is on pediatric population sciences, transforming children’s health, and informatics innovations in health care delivery. He leads several large, multi-institutional research efforts that include the development and application of child-reported health and well-being outcome measures, child health services research, and using electronic health record (EHR) data to transform care. Forrest and colleagues formed the Pediatric EHR Data Sharing Network (PEDSNet), which includes children’s hospitals and physician practices dedicated to catalyzing the development of the Learning Health System for children and youth.

Austin B. Frakt is a health economist with Healthcare Financing and Economics at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Boston Healthcare System. He joined Boston University’s School of Public Health in 2007 as assistant professor of health policy and management. He received a PhD for his work in stochastic image and signal processing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999. Frakt’s research interests include the policy, utilization, and financing of U.S. public health care programs with a recent focus on VA and Medicare prescription drug policy, private comprehensive and drug-only Medicare plans, the effects of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. He has over a dozen scholarly publications pertaining to U.S. health economics and policy.

Andria Hanbury is a research fellow at the University of York, United Kingdom. Hanbury’s main research interests are in the field of applied health psychology, particularly exploring the potential utility and feasibility of theory-based behavior change interventions to increase health professionals’ implementation of clinical recommendations.

Guy Hirst was a British Airways pilot for thirty-four years and is a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. He was a 747 training captain, responsible for training and developing British Airways training pilots on behalf of the Civil Aviation Authority for their revalidation. In addition to his “front line” role, he was one of the pioneers of the introduction of human factors training into the airline culture. He trains clinical staff on applied human factors throughout the United Kingdom and has been involved in research projects on behalf of the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and the John Radcliffe Hospital, in partnership with Oxford University and the Health Foundation. His company, Atrainability, offers courses to health care organizations using concepts and skills from aviation.

Peter M. Hockey is deputy medical director at the National Health Service (NHS) South Central Strategic Health Authority and is a practicing pulmonologist. He was a 2007–2008 Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice based at Harvard University and has particular interests in quality, patient safety, and leadership development to prepare clinicians for management roles within health care. He is also a member of the King’s Fund Commission on Leadership and Management in the NHS.

Adam N. Hofer is pursuing a medical degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received an MPH from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health with an emphasis on public health administration and policy. His research interests include primary care delivery systems and rural health.

Geraint H. Lewis is senior fellow of the Nuffield Trust, an independent charitable organization that promotes analysis and informed debate on UK health care policy. He qualified in medicine from the University of Cambridge, and worked as a junior doctor in London and Sydney before specializing in public health medicine. In recent years, he has worked as a policy advisor at the Cabinet Office and as a visiting fellow at the King’s Fund. He was a 2007–2008 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow, where his research at New York University explored the use of predictive modelling in the United States. Lewis was the 2008 recipient of the National Directors’ Award at the Veterans Health Administration in Washington, DC. In 2010 he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of London.

Kate Light is an information specialist in the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York, United Kingdom, where she designs and runs complex search strategies to locate studies for inclusion in the Centre’s research. She is an author on a Cochrane Review of antiemetic medication for nausea and vomiting in children receiving chemotherapy. Light has a BA and a PGDip.

Caroline Y. Lin currently works full-time as a clinician (internist) in primary care at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California. Her experiences in direct patient care have driven her desire to participate in research that aims to improve the delivery of patient care in a global, systematic manner. Lin was primarily engaged in research on the specialty referral process in the United States while working toward a master’s degree in clinical research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She holds an MD and an MS.

Ateev Mehrotra is an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School and a policy analyst at the RAND Corporation. His research has focused on the measurement of health care quality and efficiency and the impact of innovations in health care delivery design. Mehrotra is board certified in both internal medicine and pediatrics. He received his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco, and completed his residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Children’s Hospital Boston. He also has received formal research training from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Ira Moscovice is the Mayo Professor of Public Health and head of the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. He is director of the Upper Midwest Rural Health Research Center funded by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy. He has written extensively on issues related to rural health care and use of health services research to improve health policy decision making in state government. Moscovice is one of the leading rural health services researchers in the nation and was the first recipient of the National Rural Health Association’s Distinguished Researcher Award in 1992. He holds a PhD in administrative sciences from Yale University.

Carl A. Thompson is a professor in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York. He trained as a nurse before undertaking his bachelor’s degree and a doctorate in social policy. Thompson was awarded a personal chair at the University of York in 2008 and is the principal investigator for the TRiP-LaB project (Translating Research into Practice in Leeds and Bradford). Thompson’s research portfolio encompasses information behavior by health care professionals, describing and improving clinical decision making and judgment, and evidence-based clinical practice and policy. He is the former editor of the journal Evidence-Based Nursing (BMJ Publishing) and is a passionate advocate for fostering research knowledge and better policy decisions through information that is accessible and useful.

Rhema Vaithianathan is an associate professor of economics at the University of Auckland. She was a 2007–2008 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, based at Harvard University. Her areas of interest are international health policy and health care financing. Her recent research has focused on applying economic concepts to practical problems in health services.

Paul M. Wilson is responsible for the dissemination of research outputs produced at the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York, United Kingdom. He has over a decade of experience in translating the findings of research into formats for use by a wide range of professional audiences and the general public. Wilson also leads a program of research focused around developing, implementing, and evaluating methods of increasing the dissemination and uptake of research knowledge in practice and policy settings. He is an associate editor of the journal Implementation Science.