Stanford University

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.

Smart Agents to Reduce the Parent Health Literacy Burden in the Care of the Children with Medical Complexity

(Partner:  Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Science)

This inter-disciplinary project addresses two formidable health care realities: the growing number of patients with chronic conditions who require coordinated care from multiple medical providers, and a growing chasm between the complexity of health information and individuals’ health literacy. To meet these challenges, researchers are developing the following four computational capabilities that would support parents caring for children with medical complexity:

Assessing Health Costs and Use for Children with Special Healthcare Needs: Analytic Strategy for CCS Administrative Data

More than 70 percent of U.S. child health care resources are committed to the 5 percent of children with the most complex of medical conditions.  Fiscal pressures, reforms to the Medicaid program, and implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provide opportunities to reduce inefficiencies and to expand access to high-quality subspecialty care for these children. 

Efforts to clean air and improve health by modifying brick manufacturing in Bangladesh

Bricks, an essential building material in Bangladesh, are overwhelmingly manufactured in small kilns that produce low-priced bricks but generate substantial air pollution, which adversely affects community health. Our earlier work characterized the incentives of stakeholders in the current system. Our current project will collect objective information on brick kilns operating across Bangladesh using remote satellite sensing and disseminate this information by establishing a publicly available user-friendly website.

Reducing the risk of Nipah virus transmission in Bangladesh

Nipah virus commonly infects large fruit bats in South and Southeast Asia. It does not cause any apparent disease in bats, but when the infection spills over into humans in Bangladesh, over 75 percent of infected people die, and infected humans can pass the infection on to other people. People in Bangladesh most commonly become infected with Nipah virus by drinking raw date palm sap that has been contaminated by bats during harvest.

Consortium for Health Care Informatics Research (CHIR): Translational Use Case Project Natural Language Processing of Chest Radiograph Reports

The Consortium for Healthcare Informatics Research (CHIR) is a multisite project funded by Department of Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D). The projects develops methods in natural language processing (NLP) to advance the effective use of unstructured text and other types of electronic health record (EHR) clinical data to improve the health and health care of Veterans. 

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