Health and Medicine

FSI’s researchers assess health and medicine through the lenses of economics, nutrition and politics. They’re studying and influencing public health policies of local and national governments and the roles that corporations and nongovernmental organizations play in providing health care around the world. Scholars look at how governance affects citizens’ health, how children’s health care access affects the aging process and how to improve children’s health in Guatemala and rural China. They want to know what it will take for people to cook more safely and breathe more easily in developing countries.

FSI professors investigate how lifestyles affect health. What good does gardening do for older Americans? What are the benefits of eating organic food or growing genetically modified rice in China? They study cost-effectiveness by examining programs like those aimed at preventing the spread of tuberculosis in Russian prisons. Policies that impact obesity and undernutrition are examined; as are the public health implications of limiting salt in processed foods and the role of smoking among men who work in Chinese factories. FSI health research looks at sweeping domestic policies like the Affordable Care Act and the role of foreign aid in affecting the price of HIV drugs in Africa.

Sequoia Hall, Room 228 
390 Serra Mall 
Stanford, CA 94305 

Assistant: Bonnie Chung 
bchung@stanford.edu

(650) 725-2241 (650) 725-6951
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Professor of Biomedical Data Science, Emeritus
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Professor Olshen is a Fellow of The Institute of Mathematical Statistics, The American Statistical Association, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.  He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and the recipient of a Research Scholar in Cancer Award from the American Cancer Society. His interests include the development of statistical methods for prediction and the assessment of accuracy. He is one of the developers of CARTª binary tree-structured methods for classification, regression, and probability class estimation and of their extensions to survival analysis and clustering. In collaboration with others, he has studied these algorithms theoretically and has applied them to the computer-aided diagnosis of heart attack, as well as to making prognoses for patients with lymphoma, extracting features of organic compounds that tend to make them ulcerogenic, to data compression and the automated detection attempt to find the genes that predispose to hypertension, and to the definition of health states in health services research. His current research also involves the development of parsimonious models for describing longitudinal data, especially as they apply to understanding autoimmune disease of the kidney. Typically, these consist of the sum of an overall mean function and subject-specific coefficients of suitably smoothed eigenfunctions of residuals. In the past, he collaborated with Alan Garber in developing technologies for tracking cholesterol longitudinally in time and quantifying the accuracy of findings. Their ideas are now finding wide-ranging application.

Stanford Health Policy Associate

Center for Biomedical Informatics Research
Stanford University School of Medicine
1261 Welch Road, MSOB X-215
Stanford, California 94305-5479

(650) 725-3390
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Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics Research) and Biomedical Data Science
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Dr. Musen is Professor of Biomedical Informatics and of Biomedical Data Science, and Director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research.  Dr. Musen conducts research related to intelligent systems, reusable ontologies, metadata for publication of scientific data sets, and biomedical decision support.  His group developed Protégé, the world’s most widely used technology for building and managing terminologies and ontologies. He is principal investigator of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology, one of the original National Centers for Biomedical Computing created by the U.S. National Institutes of Heath (NIH).  He is principal investigator of the Center for Expanded Data Annotation and Retrieval (CEDAR).  CEDAR is a center of excellence supported by the NIH Big Data to Knowledge Initiative, with the goal of developing new technology to ease the authoring and management of biomedical experimental metadata.  Dr. Musen directs the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Classification, Terminology, and Standards at Stanford University, which has developed much of the information infrastructure for the authoring and management of the 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). 

Stanford Health Policy Associate

Clinical Gardner Packard Children's Health Center 
3351 El Camino Rd., Ste. 100 
Atherton, CA 94027 

Alternate Contact
Peggy Simons 
peggy.simons@stanford.edu

(650) 725-8314 (650) 725-8292 (650) 362-2584
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Professor of Pediatrics at the Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital
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Dr. Fernando Sanchez Mendoza is a Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Dean of Minority Advising and Programs at Stanford University School of Medicine. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1981 and became a Dean for Minority Advising and Program in 1983.  From 1996 to 2014, he was the Division and Service Chief for General Pediatrics at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. Dr. Mendoza’s academic career has been focused on Latino child health and workforce diversity. He has published numerous articles and chapters on the health of Latino and immigrant children, addressing issues of health care access, obesity, chronic disease, and childhood development. In workforce diversity, he has been the principal investigator of the HRSA Center of Excellence grant at Stanford School of Medicine for twenty years, developing pipeline, leadership, and faculty development programs. He published the first national study of diversity in departments of pediatrics, which demonstrated the underrepresentation of Latinos in pediatrics, and the need for Latino pediatric faculty and leaders.

As a leader in health disparities, Dr. Mendoza helped establish two local FQHC community clinics, was President of the Hispanic Serving Health Professions School, served on NIH and Institute of Medicine committees, and was recently appointed to the National Advisory Council for the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities.  He has received regional and national recognition for his work from the California Latino Medical Association, National Hispanic Medical Association, Association of American Medical Colleges, Hispanic Business Magazine, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Latino Medical Student Association. For his work in diversity, he has received the AAMC GSA-Minority Affairs Service Award, and Stanford’s JE Wallace Sterling “Muleshoe” Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award, the President’s Award for Excellence through Diversity, and the Dr. Augustus A. White Faculty Professionalism Award.

Stanford Health Policy Associate

Stanford University School of Medicine
1000 Welch Road, Suite #203
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1808

(650) 723-5906 (650) 723-9656
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Berthold and Belle N. Guggenhime Professor of Medicine, Emeritus
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Halsted Holman is the Berthold and Belle N. Guggenhime Professor of Medicine, Emeritus, and a CHP/PCOR associate. He was Chairman of the Department of Medicine and Director of the Clinical Scholar Program (CSP) at Stanford. His major research interests include the design, organization, and evaluation of experimental health care systems, studies of the effects of patient education programs on health outcomes in chronic disease, and inquiry into the roles of patients in clinical trials and clinical practice. He is a former President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Western Association of Physicians.

Stanford Health Policy Associate

Crown Quad, #333
Stanford, California 94305-8610

(650) 723-2517
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Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law
hank_greely.jpg JD

Professor Greely's work has focused on the legal aspects of the health care financing system. His interests include the incentives for employers and insurers to discriminate among possible insured consumers and the legality of such discrimination. He is also interested in broad issues of health reform, in quality assurance, in practice guidelines, and in bioethics. He has also been increasingly active in the intersection of law and the revolution in genetics, including notably through his role as a co-director of the Stanford Program in Genomics, Ethics, and Society, as co-director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science, and Technology, as a member of the California State Commission on Human Cloning, and as a member of the Human Genome Diversity Project.

Stanford Health Policy Associate

VA Palo Alto Health Care System Medical Service (111) 3801 Miranda Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94304;

Encina Commons, 615 Crothers Way Room 210, Stanford, CA 94305-6006

(650) 493-5000,,1,,1,62105
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Professor, Health Policy
Professor, Medicine (by courtesy)
mary_goldstein_profile.jpg MD, MS

 

Mary K. Goldstein is a Professor of Health Policy and a core faculty member at the Department of Health Policy and the Center for Health Policy, and the Director of the Geriatrics Research Education and Clinical Center (GRECC) at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. She directs the Primary Care Policy and Practice Advancement program at PCOR, the Stanford/VA Palo Alto Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program, and the Special Fellowship Program in Advanced Geriatrics at VA Palo Alto. She also serves as associate director for the Physician Post-Residency Fellowship Program in Health Services Research and Development, and for the Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medical Informatics, both at VA Palo Alto Health Care System.

Goldstein studies innovative methods of implementing evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for quality improvement. She leads the ATHENA Decision Support System project that has developed and implemented an automated clinical decision support system for primary care clinicians, using hypertension as a model, and now extended into several other clinical domains.  Goldstein's research also explores older adults' health preferences (health utility) for application to cost-effectiveness analysis.

Goldstein is a fellow of the American Geriatrics Society, and an emerita of the Society's board of directors. Goldstein has received a number of honors and awards including an Advanced Career Development award from the Department of Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) program.  She received a BA in philosophy and an MD, both from Columbia University, and completed her residency in family medicine at Duke University Medical Center. At the Stanford School of Medicine she completed an AHRQ-funded fellowship and an MS in health services research.

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Graduate School of Business
Knight Management Center, W242
655 Knight Way
Stanford, CA 94305-7298

(650) 723-0641 (650) 725-1668
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Marriner S. Eccles Professor of Public and Private Management, Emeritus
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Alain Enthoven is the Marriner S. Eccles Professor of Public and Private Management, emeritus, at Stanford University, and a core faculty member at CHP/PCOR. Known as the "father of managed competition," he was one of the founders of the Jackson Hole Group, a national think-tank on healthcare policy. His research focuses on the financing and delivery of health care in the United States and other industrialized nations, and cost-benefit analysis in medical care. In his numerous publications he has advocated a financially integrated healthcare delivery system that relies on market-based incentives to reduce medical costs and increase economic accountability and quality of care. He is currently working on a proposal for a "Market-based Universal Health Insurance System," being developed for the Committee for Economic Development.

Enthoven is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a former Rhodes Scholar. He is a consultant to the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan; chairman of the Health Benefits Advisory Council for the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CALPERS); a member of the board of directors of the Integrated Health Care Association; and a former chairman of Stanford University's Committee on Faculty/Staff Human Resources.

Enthoven was previously a visiting professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (1998-99), and a Rock Carling Fellow of the Nuffield Trust of London (1999). He also served as an economist with the RAND Corporation and served as president of Litton Medical Products.

He received the Baxter Prize for Health Services Research (1994), and the Board of Directors Award from the Healthcare Financial Management Association (1995). In 1963, he received the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service from John F. Kennedy. He received a BA from Stanford, a master's degree from Oxford and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- all in economics.

Stanford Health Policy Associate
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Health Research and Policy
Sequoia 132
Stanford, California 94305-4065

(650) 723-2206 (650) 725-8977
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Max H. Stein Professor and Professor of Statistics and of Health Research and Policy
efron_new.jpeg PhD

Professor Efron is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, president of the American Statistical Association, recipient of the MacArthur Prize, and winner of the Wilks Medal of the American Statistical Association. Professor Efron is renowned internationally for his pioneering work in computationally intensive statistical methods that substitute computer power for mathematical formulas, particularly the bootstrap method. The goal of this research is to extend statistical methodology in ways that make analysis more realistic and applicable for complicated problems. He consults actively in the application of statistical analyses to a wide array of health care evaluations.

Stanford Health Policy Associate
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Because the optimal level of medical malpractice liability depends on the incentives provided by the health insurance system, the rise of managed care in the 1990s may affect the relationship between liability reform and defensive medicine. In this paper, we assess empirically the extent to which managed care and liability reform interact to affect the cost of care and health outcomes of elderly Medicare beneficiaries with cardiac illness. Malpractice reforms that directly reduce liability pressure - such as caps on damages - reduce defensive practices both in areas with low and with high levels of managed care enrollment. In addition, managed care and direct reforms do not have long-run interaction effects that are harmful to patient health. However, at least for patients with less severe cardiac illness, managed care and direct reforms are substitutes, so the reduction in defensive practices that can be achieved with direct reforms is smaller in areas with high managed care enrollment. We consider some implications of these results for the current debate over the appropriateness of extending malpractice liability to managed care organizations.

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Daniel P. Kessler
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Previous research suggests that "direct" reforms to the liability system - reforms designed to reduce the level of compensation to potential claimants - reduce medical expenditures without important consequences for patient health outcomes. We extend this research by identifying the mechanisms through which reforms affect the behavior of health care providers. Although we find that direct reforms improve medical productivity primarily by reducing malpractice claims rates and compensation conditional on a claim, our results suggest that other policies that reduce the time spent and the amount of conflict involved in defending against a claim can also reduce defensive practices substantially. In addition, we find that "malpractice pressure" has a larger impact on diagnostic rather than therapeutic treatment decisions. Our results provide an empirical foundation for simulating the effects of untried malpractice reforms on health care costs and outcomes, based on their predicted effects on the malpractice pressure facing medical providers.

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Daniel P. Kessler
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