Schaeffer Center Quintiles Research Fellows

The designation of Fellow was established to foster collaboration between the Schaeffer Center and prominent researchers and thought leaders in the fields of health policy, economics, and medicine.  Invitation to join the Center as a Fellow is extended on the basis of a researchers expertise, as demonstrated by:

1. Current position and appointment.
2. Publications on relevant and innovative topics in peer-reviewed literature.

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2012 Quintiles Senior Fellows

David B. Agus, MD.,  is one of the world’s leading cancer doctors and pioneering biomedical researchers. Over the past twenty years he’s received acclaim for his innovations in medicine and contributions to new technologies that will change how all of us maintain our health. He’s also built a reputation for having a unique way of looking at the relationship of the body to health and disease. He explains, “Sometimes you have to go to war to understand peace. My work in the cancer war has taught me a lot about all things health-related, much of which goes against conventional wisdom.”

Dr. Agus is professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and the Viterbi School of Engineering and heads USC’s Westside Cancer Center and the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine. He received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton and his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He trained at Johns Hopkins and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. A staunch advocate for personalized medicine, he chairs the Global Agenda Council on Genetics for the World Economic Forum, and is co-founder of Applied Proteomics and Navigenics, two health-care technology and wellness companies.

Dr. Agus’s honors and awards include the American Cancer Society Physician Research Award, a Clinical Scholar Award from the Sloan-Kettering Institute, and the 2009 Geoffrey Beene Foundation’s Rock Stars of Science Award.

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Jay Bhattacharya, Ph.D., is an associate professor of medicine and a CHP/PCOR core faculty member. His research focuses on the constraints that vulnerable populations face in making decisions that affect their health status, as well as the effects of government policies and programs designed to benefit vulnerable populations. He has published empirical economics and health services research on the elderly, adolescents, HIV/AIDS and managed care. Most recently, he has researched the regulation of the viatical-settlements market (a secondary life-insurance market that often targets HIV patients) and summer/winter differences in nutritional outcomes for low-income American families. He is also working on a project examining the labor-market conditions that help determine why some U.S. employers do not provide health insurance.

He worked for three years as an economist at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., where he also taught health economics as a visiting assistant professor at the University of California-Los Angeles. He received a BA in economics, an MD and a PhD from Stanford University.

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Amitabh Chandra, PhD., is an economist, a Professor of Public Policy, Director of Health Policy Research, Director of PhD Admissions, and Area Chair for Social and Urban Policyat the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.He serves on the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) Panel of Health Advisors, is a Research Fellow at the IZA Institute in Bonn, Germany, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). In 2011 he served as Massachusetts’ Special Commissioner on Provider Price Reform. His research focuses on productivity and cost-growth in healthcare and racial disparities in healthcare. His research has been supported by the National Institute of Aging, the National Institute of Child Health and Development, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Health Affairs. He is an editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics, Economics Letters, and the American Economic Journal, and was previously an editor at the Journal of Human Resources. Professor Chandra has testified to the United States Senate and the United States Commission on Civil Rights. His research has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Newsweek, and on National Public Radio. Professor Chandra has been a consultant to the RAND Corporation, Microsoft Research, the Institute of Medicine and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of Massachusetts.

He is the recipient of an Outstanding Teacher Award, the first-prize recipient of the Upjohn Institute’s Dissertation Award, the Kenneth Arrow Award for best paper in health economics, and the Eugene Garfield Award for the impact of medical research. In 2012, he was awarded American Society of Health Economists (ASHE) medal. The ASHE Medal is awarded biennially to the economist age 40 or under who has made the most significant contributions to the field of health economics.

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Eileen Crimmins, Ph.D., is the AARP Professor of Gerontology in the Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California. She is currently the director of the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health, one of the Demography of Aging Centers supported by the U.S. National Institute on Aging. She is also the Director of the Multidisciplinary Training in Gerontology Program and the NIA-sponsored Network on Biological Risk. Crimmins is a co-investigator of the Health and Retirement Study in the U.S. Much of Crimmins’ research has focused on changes over time in health and mortality. Crimmins has been instrumental in organizing and promoting the recent integration of the measurement of biological indicators in large population surveys. She recently served as co-chair of a Committee for the National Academy of Sciences to address why life expectancy in the U.S. is falling so far behind that of other countries. She has recently co-edited several books with a focus on international aging, mortality and health expectancy: Determining Health Expectancies; Longer Life and Healthy Aging; Human Longevity, Individual Life Duration, and the Growth of the Oldest-old Population; International Handbook of Adult Mortality; Explaining Diverging Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries; and International Differences in Mortality at Older Ages: Dimensions and Sources.

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Bob Kocher, MD., is a partner at Venrock and focuses on healthcare IT and services investments. He currently serves on the board of Castlight and Hope Street Group and the advisory boards of the National Institute of Healthcare Management, Harvard Medical School Health Care Policy Department, and ChildObesity180. Bob joined Venrock from McKinsey & Company, where he was a Partner and led the McKinsey Center for U.S. Health Reform and worked with the various constituencies in the healthcare ecosystem to improve health policy, productivity, clinical outcomes and patient experience. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Engleberg Center for Health Reform and co-chair of the Health Data initiative, a joint effort of HHS and the Institute of Medicine, to release healthcare data to spur private sector innovation to improve healthcare cost and quality.

Prior to Venrock, Bob served in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Healthcare and Economic Policy and a member of the National Economic Council. In the Obama Administration, Bob was one of the leading shapers of the healthcare reform legislation focusing on cost, quality, and delivery system reform. He was one of the leaders of the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” childhood obesity initiative, led the formation of the Partnership for a Healthier America and served on the Federal Advisory Panel charged with developing a national obesity strategy.

Bob received undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington and a medical degree from George Washington University. He completed a research fellowship with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health, and went on to complete his internal medicine residency training at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Harvard Medical School.

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Pat Levitt, PhD.,  is a Provost Professor of Neuroscience, Pharmacy, Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Psychology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. He is also the Director of the USC Neuroscience Graduate Program. Dr. Levitt received his PhD in Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Neuroscience at Yale University. Dr. Levitt has held leadership positions at the Keck School of Medicine as Director of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute and Chair of the Department of Cell and Neurobiology, as well as other medical schools, including Chairman of the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development. Named a McKnight Foundation Scholar in 2002, Dr. Levitt also was a MERIT awardee from the National Institute of Mental Health and served as a member of the National Advisory Mental Health Council for the National Institute of Mental Health. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. He is a Senior Fellow in the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University, and serves as Scientific Director of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, a policy group bringing the best research from child and brain development disciplines to help policy makers and business leaders make better program investment decisions.

He is a member of a number of scientific advisory boards for foundations and university programs, and also serves on the editorial boards of eLife, Neuron, Cerebral Cortex, Autism Research, Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Disease Models and Mechanisms.  Dr. Levitt’s research focuses on the development of brain architecture that controls learning, emotional and social behavior. His human genetics and basic research studies on gene by environment interactions focus on understanding the causes of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia.  His clinical research studies address autism heterogeneity by studying children with autism who also have co-occurring medical conditions, such as gastrointestinal disorders, with the goal of developing better diagnostic criteria and personalized treatments. He has published over 250 papers.

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Anup Malani, PhD., is the Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. He is also a Professor at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, a University Fellow at Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C.; a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an editor of the Journal of Law and Economics and the Forum for Health Economics and Policy.

Mr. Malani teaches Law & Economics, Health Law, Federal Budget Policy, Food and Drug Law, Insurance Law, Bankruptcy, Contracts and Corporations. His research interests include law and economics (torts, contracts and welfare evaluation of legal rules), health economics and policy (control of infectious disease, medical malpractice and pharmaceutical products liability, conflicts of interest in medical research, valuing innovation, placebo effects, and drug regulation), and corporate law and finance (the role of nonprofit firms and corporate philanthropy). He has had research articles published in major law, economics and medical journals, including the Harvard Law Review, the Journal of Political Economy and the Archives of Internal Medicine. His writing can also be found in popular media, such as Forbes and the Chicago Tribune.

Mr. Malani graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 2000. He clerked for the Hon. Stephen F. Williams, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2000-2001 and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2001-2002. Mr. Malani received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s Department of Economics in 2003. Between 2002 and 2006, Mr. Malani was an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia Law School and the Health Evaluation Sciences Department of the University of Virginia Medical School. Malani was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in the fall of 2006 and during the 2008-2009 academic year. During the 2008-2009 academic year, he was also the interim director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.  Malani is also on the Board of the American Law & Economics Association.

 

Tomas J. Philipson, Ph.D., is a managing director at Precision Health Economics. He is also the Daniel Levin Professor of Public Policy Studies in the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. Philipson has served in several public sector positions. He served as the senior economic advisor to the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during 2003-04 and to the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in 2004-05. He also served as a senior health care advisor to Senator John McCain during his 2008 US presidential campaign and in December 2010 was appointed by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives to serve on the National Key Indicator Commission, created by the health care reform.

Philipson is the recipient of numerous international and national research awards. He has twice (in 2000 and 2006) been the recipient of the highest honor of his field: the Kenneth Arrow Award of the International Health Economics Association (for best paper in the field of health economics). In addition, he was awarded the Garfield Award by Research America in 2007 (for best paper in the field of health economics), The Prêmio Haralambos Simeonidisand from the Brazilian Economic Association in 2006 (for best paper in any field), and the Distinguished Economic Research Award from the Milken Institute in 2003 (for best paper in any field of economics).

Philipson is a co-editor of the journal Forums for Health Economics & Policy of Berkeley Electronic Press and is on the editorial board of the journal Health Economics and The European Journal of Health Economics. Philipson is a fellow, board member, or associate of a number of other organizations outside the University, including the National Bureau of Economic Research, the American Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute (where he is chairman of Project FDA), the Heartland Institute, the Milken Institute, and the RAND Corporation. At the University of Chicago, he is affiliated with the John M. Olin Program of Law & Economics, the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, the Northwestern/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research, the Population Research Center, and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). Philipson received his MA and PhD in economics from the Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania.

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2012 Quintiles Clinical Fellows

Sanjay Arora, MD, is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. He completed his clinical training at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2005 and joined the faculty at USC where he currently serves as the Associate Research Director in Emergency Medicine. His research area of interest is utilizing emerging technology to improve the quality and efficacy of care in patients needing acute care, and to bridge the gap between an emergency department visit and a stable outpatient medical home for low-income, inner city patients with chronic disease. As chronic disease and its impact on the emergency department is a large topic, he has focused his efforts on diabetes and HIV as model diseases on which to test interventions. His work has been funded by the CAL/ACEP Emergency Medicine Research and Education Foundation (EMREF), the McKesson Foundation, the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute (SC CTSI), Gilead Sciences, the Office of AIDS Programs and Prevention, and the California HIV/AIDS Research Program (CHRP). In addition to conducting research, he is a prominent educator in his field and received the speaker of the year award at both of the largest national conferences in emergency medicine (the American College of Emergency Physicians and the Essentials of Emergency Medicine) in 2011.

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Steve Kim, MD., MSCE, is an Assistant Professor of Urology at the Keck School of Medicine. He graduated cum laude from Yale University with a B.S. in biology and continued his education at the Cornell University Medical College where he obtained his M.D. Following medical school he pursued residency training in Urology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. It was during his time as a resident at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles where he developed an interest in treating children with congenital urologic anomalies. He then completed three years of fellowship training in Pediatric Urology at the the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. During his fellowship training, he was awarded a National Institutes of Health T32 training grant and completed a Master’s program in Clinical Epidemiology at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Kim’s research interests include improving the outcomes, the quality, the safety, and the delivery of health care to children who suffer from urologic conditions.

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Ashwini Lakshmanan, MD MPH, is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine and an attending neonatologist at the Newborn and Infant Critical Care Unit at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Ashwini graduated from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California after also receiving both a Bachelors in Science in Biological Sciences and Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences (Economics) from the University of Southern California. After completing her pediatric residency and Chief residency in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Ashwini completed two concurrent fellowships at Boston Children’s Hospital. She finished a fellowship at the Harvard Neonatal Perinatal Medicine Program where she assumed the position of Chief Fellow from 2011-2012. She also completed a research fellowship through the Harvard-wide Pediatric Health Services Fellowship and earned a Master’s in Public Health with a concentration in Clinical Effectiveness from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2012. Her research interests and goals have been to address disparities in health care delivery in the field of perinatal-neonatal medicine. She has examined issues such as maternal stress on birth outcomes and  quality of life for caregivers of preterm infants after discharge from the NICU.

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Michael Menchine, MD., MPH, is an Associate Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine and Research Director at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. Following medical school, Dr. Menchine completed residencies in Internal and Emergency Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles. Stimulated by his clinical observations on the social and policy determinants of disease, Dr. Menchine pursued a Health Services Research Fellowship through the department of emergency medicine at UCLA. During this fellowship he was awarded and F32 grant from the AHRQ and completed a Masters in Public Health.  In 2009, Dr. Menchine joined the faculty at the Keck School and works clinically in the emergency department at the LAC+USC hospital. LAC+USC is the nation’s academic hospital and serves a predominantly low income, Latino community. Dr. Menchine’s research interests center on integrating solutions for chronic disease into acute care settings with an emphasis on under-served, low-income patients with limited access to comprehensive medical care. Specifically, he has lead several studies examining strategies to improve the identification and care of patients with HIV and/or diabetes. Dr. Menchine has received funding to support his studies from AHRQ, California Policy Research Center, California HIV/AIDS Research Program, McKesson Foundation, California Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians and Gilead Sciences.

Past Visiting Scholars

Eric Helland, Ph.D.