Big and exciting merger news at Stanford Health Policy

dougloren Doug Owens and Loren Baker welcome new fellows, faculty and PhD students to the fall welcome lunch at Stanford Health Policy.

Stanford Medicine has announced a merger of its Division of Health Services Research from the Department of Health Research and Policy with the Center for Health Policy and the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research — joining together the School of Medicine’s leading researchers in the field of health policy.

The three centers have all been under the Stanford Health Policy umbrella for several years — CHP is a part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and PCOR is a division in the Department of Medicine. The faculty will now all sit under one roof at Stanford Health Policy’s newly renovated offices in Encina Commons.

“On behalf of CHP/PCOR, I want to say how delighted we are to be coming together as one health policy unit,” said Douglas K. Owens, the director of both centers. “We very much look forward to further strengthening our ongoing collaborations in research and training, and the merger will provide great opportunities for synergy.”

Loren Baker, who worked with Kate Bundorf to lead the efforts at the Division of Health Services Research, called the melding of the faculty “a real opportunity to build on the strengths Stanford has in health policy,” and said it would position Stanford Health Policy faculty for further success in their research and education programs.

“We’ve had a long history of working together and we hope that this will lead to more and better opportunities to do that going forward,” Baker said.

Owens said he wanted to thank Loren and Kate “for their terrific leadership as we have worked out how to bring our groups together,” as well as the Dean’s Office, the Department of Medicine, and FSI for their support and guidance.