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Biographical Sketches of
Workshop Speakers

Rajiv Bhatia, M.D., M.P.H., the founder and director of The Civic Engine, is an internist and social medicine practitioner with two decades of experience in advancing population health needs, including environmental quality, economic opportunity, and political inclusion. He has broad experience and expertise in the generation, analysis, and communication of data and information to inform public policy, catalyze civic engagement, and monitor governmental accountability.

Representative Sharon Cooper, M.A., M.S.N., is the chairman of Health and Human Services for the Georgia House of Representatives. Born in Houston, Texas, Rep. Cooper is proud to have called Georgia home for more than 38 years. She was married to the late Dr. Tom Cooper for more than 33 years. She was first elected in 1996 as the state representative for the 41st District of Georgia (now 43rd district). In 2000 Rep. Cooper was chosen as legislator of the year by the Georgia Republican Party, and in 2002 she was elected caucus chairman by her Republican colleagues. In 2004 she was elected majority caucus chairman, making her the highest ranking woman in the Georgia House. In 2007, in response to her ever-increasing committee responsibilities, Rep. Cooper assumed the role of caucus chair emeritus. Currently Rep. Cooper chairs the Health and Human Services committee, one of the busiest committees in the House. She was also appointed chairman of the Special Committee on Certificate of Need as well as chair of the Special Committee on Grady Hospital. Rep. Cooper is also a member of the rules, judiciary non-civil, and regu-

lated industries committees. Rep. Cooper holds several degrees, including a B.S. in child development, an M.A. in education, and an M.S.N. in nursing. Rep. Cooper has written two textbooks on psychiatric nursing, and in 1994 she authored Taxpayer’s Tea Party, a how-to book that encouraged the average citizen to become politically active. Recently she was asked to update this book, available now in e-book format. A graduate of the first class of the Coverdell Leadership Institute, Rep. Cooper was able to pass a major revision of the state’s stalking law while still in her freshman term. In 2002, A. G. Ashcroft appointed her to the president’s 30-member National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women. In 2006 Cobb County Commission Chairman Sam Olens credited Rep. Cooper as being the major catalyst behind the creation of Cobb County Police Department’s Domestic Violence Unit. She has also served on Georgia First Lady Mary Perdue’s Advisory Committee on Foster Care. Rep. Cooper continues to author and foster legislation that promotes improved health care for Georgians such as the HIV Screening Bill for Pregnant Women, Georgia Smoke free Air Act, and the “Health Share” Volunteers in Medicine Act. Rep. Cooper has earned the reputation of being one of the hardest working legislators at the Capitol as well as being honest, straightforward, and committed. Former governor and U.S. Senator Zell Miller still calls her “the little legislator that tells it like it is.”

Ross Hammond, Ph.D., is a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, where he is the director of the Center on Social Dynamics and Policy. His primary area of expertise is modeling complex dynamics in economic, social, and public health systems using mathematical and computational methods from complexity systems science. His current research topics include obesity etiology and prevention, food systems, tobacco control, behavioral epidemiology, crime, corruption, segregation, trust, and decision making. Dr. Hammond received his B.A. from Williams College and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He has authored numerous scientific articles, and his work has been featured in New Scientist, Salon, The Atlantic Monthly, Scientific American, and major news media. Hammond was a member of the authoring committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM)/National Research Council report A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System, and he is a public health advisor at the National Cancer Institute, an advisory special government employee at the Center for Tobacco Products of the Food and Drug Administration, and an advisory council member at the National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities. He also currently serves on the editorial board of the journals Behavioral Science & Policy and Childhood Obesity and has been a member of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)funded research networks MIDAS (Models of Infectious Disease Agent

Study), ENVISION (part of the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research), NICH (Network on Inequality, Complexity, and Health), and SCTC (State and Community Tobacco Control). Dr. Hammond has been a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the IOM, and NIH. He has taught computational modeling at the Harvard School of Public Health, the University of Michigan, Washington University, the National Cancer Institute, and the NIH/CDC Institute on Systems Science and Health. He currently holds appointments at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Santa Fe Institute, and Washington University in St Louis, and he previously held positions as the Okun–Model Fellow in Economics, a National Science Foundation fellow in the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan, and a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

J. T. Lane currently serves as the assistant secretary for public health in Louisiana. As head of the chief public agency charged with promoting and protecting the health of all Louisiana residents and visitors, Mr. Lane has prioritized making environmental and place-based policy changes to promote healthy lifestyles and building a new Center for Population Health Informatics to increase transparency and better equip and empower communities to make healthy changes. Lane has served in consulting and full-time roles for a variety of organizations, including Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, nonprofits, and government agencies in the higher education, human services, health, and technology sectors across the country. He currently serves on the board of directors for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and has chaired several of its national policy committees. He received his master ’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, has completed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s New Health Leaders program certification at the Harvard Kennedy School for Government, and received his bachelor ’s degree from Louisiana State University.

Nick Macchione, M.P.H., F.A.C.H.E., is the agency director of the County of San Diego’s Health and Human Services Agency. In that role Mr. Macchione manages one of the nation’s largest health and human services networks at the local level, supporting the public health, safety, and well-being of the more than 3.2 million residents of San Diego County. With an annual budget responsibility of $2 billion, Mr. Macchione oversees a workforce of 6,000 employees, hundreds of volunteers, 1,000 service contractors, and 162 citizen advisory boards and councils that collectively provide direct services to more than 1 million clients annually. With a focus on innovation and service integration, he works closely with local, state, and federal elected officials on advancing evidence-based policy

for population health and directs the delivery of health and social service safety net programs, including public health services, behavioral health services, Medicaid managed care and other safety net health insurance programs, nutrition assistance for the indigent, child and adult protective services, and early childhood development programs. Mr. Macchione implements operational policy direction of an elected county board of supervisors and oversees the operations of the county’s psychiatric hospital; the Edgemoor Skilled Nursing Facility (2014 winner of a Silver Achievement in Quality Award by the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living); the Polinsky Children’s Center, a 24-hour facility for the temporary emergency shelter of children; and San Pasqual Academy, a first-of-its kind residential campus for foster youth. Under Mr. Macchione’s leadership, in 2010 the Health and Human Services Agency and the rest of County government embarked on a bold and ambitious county-wide health and wellness movement known as Live Well San Diego. This groundbreaking, data-driven strategy is now being implemented throughout the entire region through public–private partnerships in building better health, safer living, and economic vitality for all San Diego County residents. Live Well San Diego is a collective impact model that has received numerous awards and recognitions and is being replicated in other jurisdictions in California and throughout the country. He is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, having previously served a 3-year term as the elected regent for San Diego and Imperial Counties. He is a public health leadership scholar alumnus with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a Creating Healthier Communities fellow alumnus of the American Hospital Association’s Health Forum. He is a commissioner of the First Five Commission of San Diego and serves on numerous regional and national boards, including serving as vice chair of the National Association of Counties’ Healthy Counties Initiative Advisory Board and of the steering committee for Harvard University’s Human Services Summit. Mr. Macchione holds dual master ’s degrees from Columbia University and New York University, where he specialized in health services management and health policy. For the past 18 years he has been an instructor and faculty member at San Diego State University’s Graduate School of Public Health. In 2007 he was appointed as the school’s John Hanlon Executive Scholar for the division of health management and policy.

David Mendez, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy (HMP) at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, with training in operations research and system science. His research focuses on the analysis of population health problems through the use of computational models. He has published

in the areas of tobacco control, residential radon mitigation, and human papilloma virus vaccine uptake, among others. Dr. Mendez is also actively involved in promoting online education and is currently the director of the executive master ’s program in HMP.

George Miller, Ph.D., M.S.E., has served on the technical staff of Altarum Institute and one of Altarum’s predecessor organizations, Vector Research, Inc., since 1972. He is currently affiliated with Altarum’s Center for Sustainable Health Spending, where he participates in the center ’s efforts to track national health spending, understand the drivers of spending growth, and quantify a sustainable spending growth rate. In other efforts, he has supported Altarum in applications of operations research to modeling and analysis of health care issues that have included the value of prevention, disease management, medical responses to demand surges, cost-effectiveness of clinical interventions, beneficiary population forecasting, telemedicine, graduate medical education, medical logistics, medical staffing, medical facilities planning, and collections forecasting. His work has been published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Health Affairs, Medical Decision Making, Health Care Management Science, Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, Interfaces, and Management Science. He frequently serves as a reviewer for several of these journals. Dr. Miller has chaired numerous sessions at national meetings of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), served on INFORMS’s long-range planning committee, and served for 7 years (3 years as chair) on its committee to select the recipient of the Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Health Services. Dr. Miller received his B.S.E., M.S.E., and Ph.D. degrees in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan, where he subsequently served as an adjunct assistant professor.

Bobby Milstein, Ph.D., M.P.H., directs ReThink Health’s work in dynamics, systems strategy, and sustainable financing. An expert in health system dynamics and policy, Dr. Milstein oversees the ongoing development of the ReThink Health Dynamics Model. He spent 20 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he founded the Syndemics Prevention Network and coordinated planning and evaluation activities for a number of public health initiatives. Dr. Milstein has a Ph.D. in public health science from Union Institute and University, an M.P.H. from Emory University, and a B.A. in cultural anthropology from the University of Michigan Honors College.

Karen Minyard, Ph.D., has directed the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC) at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy

Studies since 2001. Dr. Minyard connects the research, policy, and programmatic work of the center across issue areas including community and public health, end-of-life care, child health, health philanthropy, public and private health coverage, and the uninsured. Prior to assuming her current role, she directed the networks for rural health program at the GHPC. She has experience with the state Medicaid program, both with the design of a reformed Medicaid program and the external evaluation of the primary care case management program. She also has 13 years of experience in nursing and hospital administration. She is an advocate for the importance of community in national, state, and local policy and for the power of communities to improve health. Dr. Minyard maintains her connection with communities by working directly with local health collaboratives and serving on the boards of the National Network of Public Health Institutes, Physicians’ Innovation Network, and Communities Joined in Action. Dr. Minyard’s research interests include financing and the evaluation of health-related social policy programs; the strategic alignment of public and private health policy on all levels; the role of local health initiatives in access and health improvement; the role of targeted external facilitation and technical assistance in improving the sustainability, efficiency, and programmatic effectiveness of nonprofit health collaboratives; and public health systems and financing. Dr. Minyard frequently makes presentations and acts as a neutral convener and facilitator for groups and organizations. She often provides testimony for the state legislature and recently presented to congressional and executive agency staff at the National Health Policy Forum. Currently, she is spearheading a team of faculty and staff at Georgia State University dedicated to translating national health care reform. She received a bachelor ’s degree in nursing from the University of Virginia, a master ’s degree in nursing from the Medical College of Georgia, and a doctoral degree in business administration with a major in strategic management and minor in health care financing from Georgia State University.

Pasky Pascual, M.S., J.D., is an environmental scientist and lawyer who works for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He served as the director of the EPA’s Council for Regulatory Environmental Modeling. His primary interest is in the area of regulatory decision making, and he has published papers on the judicial review of regulatory science. Pasky began his work at EPA with the Climate Change Division, during which he worked with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to help measure the greenhouse gases avoided through projects funded by the EPA. He followed this up with work on an initiative spearheaded by the Clinton Administration, leading stakeholders from industry, government, and the NGO sector to develop approaches to facility management that com-

bined environmental performance, regulatory flexibility, and economic efficiency. He led efforts within EPA’s Research and Development Office to look at the emerging risks and opportunities associated with bio- and nano-technology.

Louise B. Russell, Ph.D., is a distinguished professor at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research and in the Department of Economics at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the methods and application of cost-effectiveness analysis. Before coming to Rutgers, Dr. Russell was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 1983, she has served on several IOM committees, including the National Cancer Policy Board (2001–2005) and the Committee on Valuing Community-Based, Non-Clinical Prevention Policies and Wellness Strategies (2011–2012). Dr. Russell co-chaired the U.S. Public Health Service Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, which published recommendations for improving the quality and comparability of cost-effectiveness studies in a book (Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, Oxford University Press, 1996) and three articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association (October 1996). Since 2011 she has been one of a group of five leaders in the field who are organizing and facilitating the Second Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, which is working to bring the book and the recommendations up to date with the many advances in cost-effectiveness since 1996. She was deputy editor of the journal Medical Decision Making from 2011 to 2015 and has published many articles and seven books, including Educated Guesses: Making Policy About Medical Screening Tests (California/Milbank, 1994), Is Prevention Better Than Cure? (Brookings, 1986), and Technology in Hospitals: Medical Advances and Their Diffusion (Brookings, 1979). Dr. Russell received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

Darshak Sanghavi, M.D., is the director of the Population and Preventive Health Models Group at the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation, where he oversees the development of large pilot programs aimed at improving the nation’s health care costs and quality. Recently, he was the Richard Merkin Fellow and a managing director of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution, where he directed efforts to better engage clinician in health care payment and delivery reform. Dr. Sanghavi is also an associate professor of pediatrics and the former chief of pediatric cardiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he was charged with clinical and research programs dedicated to children’s heart defects. An award-winning medical

educator, he also has worked in medical settings around the world and published dozens of scientific papers on topics ranging from the molecular biology of cell death to tuberculosis transmission patterns in Peruvian slums. A frequent guest on NBC’s Today show and a past commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered, Dr. Sanghavi is a contributing editor to Parents magazine and is Slate’s health care columnist, and he often writes about health care for the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Washington Post. His best-seller, A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician’s Tour of the Body, was named a best health book of the year by the Wall Street Journal. He speaks widely on medical issues at national conferences, advises federal and state health departments, and is a former visiting media fellow of the Kaiser Family Foundation and a winner of the Wharton Business Plan Competition. He previously worked for several years as a U.S. Indian Health Service pediatrician on a Navajo reservation.

Steven Teutsch, M.D., M.P.H., is an independent consultant; an adjunct professor at the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles; a senior fellow at the Public Health Institute; and a senior fellow at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California. Until 2014 he was the chief science officer for Los Angeles County Public Health, where he continued his work on evidence-based public health and policy. He had been in the outcomes research and management program at Merck since October 1997, where he was responsible for scientific leadership in developing evidence-based clinical management programs, conducting outcomes research studies, and improving outcomes measurement to enhance quality of care. Prior to joining Merck, he was the director of the Division of Prevention Research and Analytic Methods (DPRAM) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he was responsible for assessing the effectiveness, safety, and the cost-effectiveness of disease and injury prevention strategies. DPRAM developed comparable methodology for studies of the effectiveness and economic impact of prevention programs, provided training in these methods, developed CDC’s capacity for conducting necessary studies, and provided technical assistance for conducting economic and decision analysis. The division also evaluated the impact of interventions in urban areas, developed the Guide to Community Preventive Services, and provided support for CDC’s analytic methods. He has served as a member of that task force and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which develops the Guide to Clinical Preventive Services, as well as the Americas Health Information Community Personalized Health Care Workgroup and the Evaluation of Genomic Applications in Prevention and Practice Workgroup. He chaired the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics Health and Society and

has served on and has chaired Institute of Medicine panels, Medicare’s Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee, and several subcommittees of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Healthy People 2020. Dr. Teutsch joined CDC in 1977, where he was assigned to the Parasitic Diseases Division and worked extensively on toxoplasmosis. He was then assigned to the Kidney Donor Program and subsequently the Kidney Disease Program. He developed the framework for CDC’s diabetes control program. He joined the Epidemiology Program Office and became the director of the Division of Surveillance and Epidemiology, where he was responsible for coordinating CDC’s disease monitoring activities. He became chief of the Prevention Effectiveness Activity in 1992. Dr. Teutsch was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received his undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences at Harvard University in 1970, an M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health in 1973, and his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine in 1974. He completed his residency training in internal medicine at Pennsylvania State University, Hershey. He was certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 1977, the American Board of Preventive Medicine in 1995, and is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American College of Preventive Medicine. Dr. Teutsch has published more than 200 articles and 8 books in a broad range of fields in epidemiology, including parasitic diseases, diabetes, technology assessment, health services research, and surveillance.

Gary VanLandingham, Ph.D., is the director of the Pew–MacArthur Results First Initiative, a joint initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He manages Pew’s work to advance the use of cost-benefit analysis and to cultivate a climate for evidence-based decision making that can enable states to eliminate ineffective programs and shift resources to those that generate the best outcomes. As lead on Pew’s efforts to improve the use of data on cost-effectiveness in state policy making, VanLandingham works with state partners to implement proven analytical tools that more accurately assess the true costs and benefits of public programs. He also helps policy makers use the findings to drive state dollars toward programs with the highest returns on taxpayer investments. Before joining Pew in January 2011, VanLandingham served for 7 years as director of the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, the Florida Legislature’s policy research and evaluation arm. He has more than 30 years of experience conducting and leading policy studies at the state and local government levels. He has served as the staff chair of the National Conference of State Legislatures, chair of the National Legislative Program Evaluation Society, and president of the Southeast Evaluation Associa-

tion and the North Florida Chapter of the American Society for Public Administration. He also taught as an adjunct professor with the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University. VanLandingham has a Ph.D. and a master ’s degree in public administration from Florida State University and a bachelor ’s from the University of Florida.

Michael Weisberg, Ph.D., is a professor and chair of the philosophy department at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Weisberg is also a distinguished research scholar at the Annenberg Center for Public Policy and a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and Penn Museum. His research focuses on the philosophy of science, especially modeling, trade-offs, robustness analysis, the nature of the chemical bond, the division of cognitive labor, and public understanding of science.

Steven Woolf, M.D., M.P.H., is the director of the Center on Society and Health and a professor of family medicine, both at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is board certified in family medicine and in preventive medicine and public health. His work has focused on promoting effective health care services and on highlighting the importance of the behavioral and social determinants of health, particularly with regard to the role of poverty, education, and racial and ethnic disparities in determining the health of Americans. In addition to his work as a researcher, he has also been involved with health policy issues. Dr. Woolf recently chaired the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine committee that authored the report U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health. He has served as science adviser, member, and senior adviser to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He has an M.D. from Emory University and an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University.