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The Department’s faculty is committed to developing a broad base of research and scholarship, as the intellectual foundation for our current and future professional education programs. The multidisciplinary nature of the domains of both health policy and health management presents both challenges and opportunities for the growth of externally funded research programs. The challenge is in attracting and retaining sufficient faculty with proven track record, or potential promise in scholarship and sponsored research, to support multidisciplinary research. The opportunities for doing collaborative work with researchers and clinicians across the disciplines within the health sciences and other professional schools, e.g., law, social work, etc. are great. The core disciplines represented within the Department include health economics, health services research, health policy, and organization studies applied to health care.
The HPM faculty is engaged in interdisciplinary research, addressing a range of problems relevant to public policy, organization and management as applied to health care organizations and systems. The specific research and scholarly interests of HPM faculty include:
| | • Health care financing and insurance issues, e.g., costs of graduate medical education, funding health care for children, and the economics of mental health
• Health policy, e.g., strategic management and governance in healthcare organizations, and the role of healthcare organizations as corporate citizens
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• Organization studies, including administrative ethics and leadership in health care
• Evaluation (outcomes and process) research in community health
• Management development for integrated health care systems and networks
• Health law and public health law
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• Barriers to access for uninsured/underinsured populations
• Policy issues relevant to health disparities among rural, minority and other populations
• Applications of health economic analysis, including the effects of managed care, employment and health care financing, financing of behavioral health services, worker's compensation and health, and patient preferences and decision-making | Examples of currently funded research include … | | • “Organization Change to Improve Nursing Home Environment,” Howard Degenholtz, Ph.D., Co-Investigator, Agency for Health Care Research
• “Improving Quality of Primary Care for Anxiety Disorders”, Judith R. Lave, Ph.D., Primary Investigator, NIH
• “How Managed Care Growth Has Affected Health Departments’ and Physicians’ Ability to Provide Indigent Care” (PI: Chris Keane; Chyongchiou Jeng Lin, Ph.D., Investigator)
• Grants to support the Health Policy Institute, including endowment of a chair for its Director, from a number of foundations and organizations in Western Pennsylvania, Beaufort Longest, Ph.D., M. Allen Pond Professor of Health Policy & Management, Director, Health Policy Institute
• “Work-Related Motor Vehicle Crashes: Reducing the Burden”, Pamela Peele, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, NIOSH (CDC)
• “An Evaluation Study of a UPMC Braddock Community Outreach Initiative”, Wesley M. Rohrer, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, UPMC Office of Community Initiatives
• “Risk and Preferences: Racial Disparities in Cardiac Care,” Carol Stockman, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute | |
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