Health/care Disparities Grand Rounds
March 13, 2012
Ashish Jha, MD, MPH is associate professor of Health Policy and Management in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is also an associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, associate physician at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and VA Boston Healthcare System. Dr. Jha’s main professional interests are in quality of care, disparities in care, and the impact of information technology in these areas. He has worked in areas evaluating IT solutions for reducing medication errors and improving quality and the role of public reporting on quality of care and impact on providers. His ongoing work includes a study of hospital organizations that care for a disproportionate number of minorities, as well as IT adoption among Massachusetts physicians who care for large minority populations.
Dr. Jha spoke on the following topic:
The quality of care at minority-serving hospitals: New challenges under the Affordable Care Act.
Click here to listen to Grand Rounds March 13, 2012; Ashish Jah
Click here for the slides for his talk: How will minority serving hospitals fare under the ACA?
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December 13, 2011
Dr. Deborah Bowen, PhD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH). She is also the principal investigator of the BUSPH Prevention Research Center, focused on the health of public housing residents, and for a grant to identify the causes of the SES and obesity relationship in middle aged women.
Dr. Bowen spoke on the following topic:
Research on Socioeconomic Status and Obesity: The Prevention Research Center
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April 27, 2011
Margarita Alegria, PhD is the Director of the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research (CMMHR) at Cambridge Health Alliance, and a full professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She has devoted her professional career to researching disparities in mental health and substance abuse services, with the goal of improving access, equity, and quality of these services for disadvantaged and minority populations. She currently serves as Principal Investigator of three National Institutes of Health-funded research studies, including the continuation of the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS), which aims to estimate disparities in mental health and substance abuse services for a nationally-representative sample of Asians and Latinos, as compared to non-Latino whites. The Advanced Center for Latino and Mental Health Systems Research seeks to formulate methods and conduct research that will contribute to designing interventions aimed at reducing disparities in mental health services among Latino and Black populations. The newly-funded UPR/CHA Research Center of Excellence intends to integrate and centralize a synergistic core of researchers into a single interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary research enterprise by pulling together resources, leadership, and expertise from the mainland United States and the island of Puerto Rico to conduct asthma and mental health disparities research in Latino communities. She is also Principal Investigator of a study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to provide information to policy-makers and clinicians to improve the quality of depression care. Dr. Alegría’s published works focus on the areas of services research, conceptual and methodological issues with minority populations, risk behaviors, and disparities in service delivery. She was awarded the 2003 Mental Health Section Award of the American Public Health Association, as well as the 2006 Greenwood Award for Research Excellence, awarded by the Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) Program Directors Association, and the First Latino Mental Health Scientific Leadership Award, awarded in October 2007.
Dr. Alegria spoke on the following topic:
Patient Activation: Is It a Way to Reduce Disparities?
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April 6, 2010
Our speakers include Danny McCormick, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School and Michele David, MD, MPH, MBA, Associate Professor of Medicine, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. Dr. McCormick will provide an overview of health reform and a review of the data regarding the effectiveness of reform in improving access to care; and Dr. David will speak about the reform’s effect on and response from the local community, as well as ongoing legislative changes being contemplated for refining health reform.
The topic of the discussion was:
Massachusetts Health Reform: Implications for Health Care Disparities
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December 15, 2009
Our speakers include Jeroan Allison, MD, MPH, Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Medical School, LeRoi Hicks, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, and Julien Dedier, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, General Internal Medicine, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. Each speaker will describe an intervention to reduce disparities in hypertension care and outcomes, followed by extensive opportunity for discussion about these interventions and how they might also be useful in other clinical contexts.
The topic of the discussion was:
Addressing Racial Disparities in Hypertension Care and Outcomes