University of Pennsylvania
Melissa Berkowitz, MPP is a Project Manager in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. She received her Master of Public Policy with a Policy Analysis Specialization from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, Germany and her BA in History from New York University. She has studied and worked in New York City, Accra, Tel Aviv, Berlin, and Philadelphia in the fields of international entrepreneurial development, low-income home care, veterans’ care, workers’ rights protection, and international education. Her research interests focus on the socioeconomic impacts of life and health shocks. She is currently working on projects related to the informal care market for older adults, the effects of cognitive training on older adults, and the variation in end of life care.
Steve Boucher is a Senior Research Coordinator in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. Steve received his M.S. in Community and Regional Planning from Temple University and his B.A. in Urban Studies from the State University of New York at Albany. Before coming to Penn, he managed research services at the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia. Much of his research has been focused on economic, workforce, and community development, as well as industry market research and competitive intelligence.
Norma B. Coe, PhD is an Associate Professor of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her PhD in Economics from MIT and BA in Economics from the College of William & Mary. Dr. Coe is a health economist whose research focuses on identifying causal effects of policies that directly and indirectly impact health, human behavior, health care access, and health care utilization. She has studied healthcare costs, costs to caregivers, the quality of care delivered in an informal vs. formal care setting, the cost-effectiveness of various interventions, and worked with forecasting models. In her research projects, Dr. Coe uses econometric and health services research techniques to answer pressing questions for policymakers about aging in America.
Jason Karlawish, MD is a Professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, and Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is Co-Director of the Penn Memory Center; Director of the Outreach and Recruitment Core of Penn’s Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center; and Director of the Penn Healthy Brain Research Center. He has substantial experience and a broad background in the diagnosis, treatment and study of older adults with cognitive impairment, particularly those with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. Much of Dr. Karlawish’s ongoing work examines issues related to the translation of Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers and clinical assessments into clinical trials and patient care. This includes the development of processes and innovative methods to disclose gene and biomarker results to cognitively normal older adults, studies of the impact of learning those results on individuals and their loved ones, and studies of the determinants of quality of life and stigma.
Liisa T. Laine, PhD, MSc, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine. She has a PhD in Economics from the University of Jyväskylä. Dr. Laine’s research concerns efficiency and incentives in health care markets. In particular, she specializes in causal inference using quasi-experimental methods to study the effects of health information technology on pharmaceutical use and patient outcomes. In addition to empirical research, Dr. Laine also develops theoretical industrial organization models to study the effects of health care competition on prices and quality and the design of provider payments. Dr. Laine’s most recent work focuses on analyzing the supply and demand responses of regulation and competition in long-term care markets. Before the current appointment, Dr. Laine held visiting positions at The Comparative Health Outcomes, Policy, and Economics (CHOICE) Institute at University of Washington (2017-2018), the Economics Department at Columbia University (2015-2017) and Boston University (2012-2015).
Katherine Miller, PhD, MSPH is a Postdoctoral Researcher working with Norma Coe on the project examining the effects of informal care for persons with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias. Her dissertation work examined the effects of financial supports for informal caregivers on caregiver health outcomes and employment decisions. Her research focuses on the intersection of aging and health policy evaluation as informed by health economics.
Liz Taggert, MPH is a Statistical Analyst at Penn in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. Ms. Taggert has a Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology from Drexel University. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Health and Societies. In recent years, she has worked on surveillance of varicella-zoster virus and heavy metal exposures in both local and state health departments. Her research interests include infectious disease epidemiology, chronic diseases of aging, and disease prevention. Her current research projects are focused on patient outcomes for those with dementia related to informal care versus formal care and overall patterns in long-term care utilization.
Duke University
Courtney Van Houtven, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Population Health Science, Duke University School of Medicine and a Research Scientist at the Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation, Durham VA Health Care System. Dr. Van Houtven, received her PhD in Health Policy and Administration, from the School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Van Houtven’s aging and economics research interests include long-term care financing, informal care, and end-of-life care. She examines the effects of family caregiving on health care utilization, spending, and outcomes for both care recipients and caregivers. She is interested in using evidence-based research to understand how best to support family caregivers and optimize care recipient outcomes.
University of Chicago
R. Tamara Konetzka, PhD is a Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Chicago. She received a PhD in Health Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Her experience combines rigorous academic training with extensive institutional knowledge of long-term care providers. Dr. Konetzka conducts research in health economics, aging and long-term care, quality of care, hospital markets, and Medicare and Medicaid policy, focusing on the relationship between economic incentives and quality of care.
University of Washington
Anirban Basu, PhD, MS, is a health economist and a statistician who specializes in research on comparative and cost effectiveness analyses, causal inference methods, program evaluation, and outcomes research. He directs The Comparative Health Outcomes, Policy, and Economics (CHOICE) Institute at the University of Washington, Seattle, with appointments in the departments of Pharmacy, Health Services, and Economics at the University. He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. He studies heterogeneity in clinical and economic outcomes, micro behavior with respect to heterogeneous information, and the value of individualized care. He teaches topics in health economics, decision analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and health services research methods. He received his PhD in Public Policy (Health Economics Specialization) from The University of Chicago and an MS in Biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.