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.

Nothing Short of A Revolution: Women's Movements Might Just Liberate Us All!

-

Kavita Ramdas is an inspirational and mindful leader, an advocate for human rights, open and civil societies, and a respected advisor and commentator on issues of social entrepreneurship, development, education, health, and philanthropy.  Kavita has spent her professional life shaping a world where gender equality can help ensure human rights and dignity for all.  She is currently a Visiting Scholar and Fellow at Stanford University, The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS).  In 2011, Kavita will be a Visiting Scholar abd Practitioner at Princeton University's Wodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

From 1996 to 2010, Kavita served as President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, which grew to become the world's largest public foundation for women's rights under her leadership.  During her tenure, the Global Fund assets grew to $21million from $3 million, giving women in more than 170 countries critical access to financial capital that fueled innovation and change. Kavita serves as Senior Advisor for the Global Fund for Women.

An instinctive entrepreneur, Kavita's leadership skills were recognized early in her tenure at the Global Fund for Women when she was chosen to be a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.  Her vision, drive, and management skills helped the Global Fund launch programs to promote girls' education, defend women's right to health and reproductive rights, prevent violence against women, and advance women's economic independence and political participation. Among these were a pioneering Africa Outreach Initiative that channeled over $30 million in grants to women's rights activists in Sub Saharan Africa, and the ground-breaking Now or Never Fund which infused $10 million over 5 years to groups working to preserve women's reproductive health and rights, combat religious extremism, and sustain communities in the midst of war and conflict.

Prior to her time at the Global Fund for Women, Kavita developed and implemented grantmaking programs to combat poverty and inequality in inner cities across the United States as well as advance women's reproductive health in Nigeria, India, Mexico and Brazil in her capacity as a Program Officer at the Chicago based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Kavita's extensive experience in the fields of global development, human rights, women's leadership, and philanthropy have led to her service as an Advisor and Board Member for a wide range of organizations; the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the Women's Funding Network,  and the Global Development Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She currently serves on the Advisory Council of the Asian University for Women Support Foundation, the Global Health Initiative of the University of Chicago, PAX World Management, and the Council of Advisors on Gender Equity of the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University.

Kavita Chairs the Expert Working Group of the Council of Global Leaders for Reproductive Health, an initiative led by Mary Robinson, former President for Ireland.  She serves on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University, Mount Holyoke College, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. 

An accomplished writer and public speaker, Kavita's thought leadership is evident in writings published in a wide variety of journals, newspaper, and magazines, including the Nation, Foreign Policy, and Conscience. She has spoken at many venues, including the Global Philanthropy Forum, TED, and the United Nations.  Her media commentary and interviews include appearances on NOW with the Bill Moyers Show, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Democracy Now!, and CNN.

Kavita is the recipient of numerous philanthropic and leadership awards including in 2010, the Council on Foundation's Robert Scrivner Award for Most Creative Grantmaker of the Year, and the Frances Hesselbein Award for Excellence in Leadership. She is a 2011 Awardee of the Legal Momentum Award.

Kavita was born and raised in India and is married to Zulfiqar Ahmad, an independent researcher on South Asia security issues. Their daughter, Mira Ahmad, is a junior at Palo Alto High School.  Kavita enjoys hiking, cooking, writing, poetry, and is a long time practitioner of yoga. 

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Kavita Ramdas Visiting Scholar 2010-2011 Speaker CDDRL
Seminars

Global Underdevelopment Action Fund awards six grants to projects addressing global underdevelopment

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University has awarded six seed grants in the first round of funding from the Global Underdevelopment Action Fund. The grants are intended to jumpstart early-stage multidisciplinary research projects that tackle persistent problems of global underdevelopment. The Action Fund, which is supported by expendable gifts from FSI donors, matching funds from the Office of the President, and FSI, grew out of the Institute's spring 2010 conference on Technology, Governance, and Global Development, which featured keynote speaker Bill Gates, together with leaders from business, government, and nonprofit organizations, the media, and the academic community, to examine novel integrative approaches to poverty alleviation and human development around the world. The Action Fund projects range across disciplines, focusing primarily on problems in developing and transitioning societies. The majority of the projects have a health dimension, reflecting the degree to which poor health outcomes mirror a country's development status.

"Stanford is uniquely placed among American universities to bring cutting edge research to bear on practical problems of development.  No other institution has lower barriers to multidisciplinary work.  The Action Fund award recipients are drawn from many different parts of the university but united in their concern for promoting development," said Stephen D. Krasner,  the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, Senior Associate Dean of the Social Sciences at H&S, and deputy director of FSI.

Six multidisciplinary research teams led by Stanford faculty from across the university will receive a total of $236,000 in seed grants. The projects were selected by a faculty committee chaired by Stephen Krasner, with a focus on early-stage, multidisciplinary, policy-relevant research. All, projects are required to have a training component for Stanford undergraduate or graduate students.

The award-winning projects and their principal investigators are:

  • Explaining and Improving U.S. Global Health Financing
    Eran Bendavid, assistant professor of medicine and affiliate in FSI’s Center for Health Policy. Co-investigator: Rajaie Batniji, postdoctoral fellow, Department of Medicine. With a sharp divergence between justifications for global health funding and the countries and diseases to which funding is disbursed, this study will conduct a quantitative analysis of the determinants of U.S. financing for the 171 countries receiving development assistance for health in 2009. The project seeks to identify the key drivers for U.S. global health financing by country and facilitate research on how to make global health financing work better. 
  • Peasants into Democrats: Evaluating the Impact of Information on Local Governance in Mali
    James D. Fearon, professor of political science. Co-investigator and trainee: Jessica Gottlieb, PhD student in political science. Recent research suggests that enhancing voter information holds promise for increasing government accountability in new democracies. This project will undertake a field experiment in Mali, a model of an underperforming new democracy, to test the theory that information that sufficiently raises citizen voter expectations of government performance can have an important effect on governance. It will examine the impact of an intervention that provides citizens with a civics course on voter and government behavior.
  • Effects of “Best Buy Health and Nutrition Toolkit” for Improving Educational Outcomes in Rural China
    Scott Rozelle, FSI Senior Fellow. Co-investigator and trainee: Paul H. Wise, professor of pediatrics, FSI senior fellow, and Patricia Foo, MD/PhD student, economics. Studies show high levels of anemia, nearsightedness, intestinal worms, and poor health and sanitation among children in China’s rural boarding schools. This project will measure initial health and nutrition levels of students in a randomized control setting, and deploy a set of affordable and sustainable interventions in treatment schools that includes multivitamins, eyeglasses, deworming medication, and nutrition and sanitation training. The project will then assess what works and what does not by comparing improvements in academic performance in treatment and control groups. The results of this experiment are intended to inform education and nutrition policy in China at the central and provincial levels.
  • Controlling Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis: A Cooperative Agenda for China and North Korea
     Gary K. Schoolnik, professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology, and FSI senior fellow. Co-investigator: Sharon Perry, senior research scientist, Department of Medicine and FSI/CISAC. Rates of tuberculosis, a disease that thrives on poverty, malnutrition, and interrupted medical care, are now among the highest in the world in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea), elevating the risk of an epidemic of drug-resistant strains and a spread into China. This project represents a unique historical opportunity to examine the relationship between food security, malnutrition, and the epidemiology of tuberculosis in a present-day famine.

  • Political Causes of Russia’s Public Health Crisis
    Kathryn Stoner, FSI senior fellow. Co-investigator: Rajaie Batniji, postdoctoral fellow, Department of Medicine. In spite of the economic advances and increases in GDP since the collapse of communism, Russia suffers from a range of dismal public health outcomes reminiscent of a much poorer country. This study seeks to understand what role political factors play in the country’s high adult mortality rate and declining life expectancy by mining World Bank and World Health Organization data and examining how Russians access healthcare services and information

  • Factors Affecting Adoption and Ongoing Use of Improved Biomass Stoves in Karnataka and Maharashtra, India
    Frank Wolak, professor of economics and FSI senior fellow. Co-investigator: Mark C. Thurber, research scholar, FSI/Program on Energy and Sustainable Development. Burning of biomass in traditional stoves is associated with a host of ills among an estimated 2.5 billion people around the world, even though cleaner and more efficient technologies exist that could mitigate the problems. This study will examine what factors affect cooking mode choice and utilization, with the objective of developing an econometric model that is useful for efforts that encourage the adoption of improved biomass stoves. The project also seeks to offer insights on poorly understood processes of technology adoption among poor populations and to understand the magnitude of health, development, and environmental benefits that might be achievable.
Hero Image
FSI Sq
All News button
1

An Asian dimension to the Stanford Center for Population Research

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and its Asia Health Policy Program have joined with other centers and programs across the university as collaborative partners for the new Stanford Center for Population Research (SCPR). Supporting population research among faculty and students throughout Stanford, the SCPR is led by Professor Shripad Tuljapurkar, co-editor with Karen Eggleston of the book Aging Asia: Economic and Social Implications of Rapid Demographic Change in China, Japan, and South Korea.

The Stanford Center for Population Research, based in the Institute for Research in Social Sciences, has leadership and involvement across campus including the Humanities, Natural Sciences, Environmental programs, and the Medical School. The goal is to promote, support and develop population studies through collaboration among researchers and training for undergraduate and graduate students, serving as both a resource and nexus for faculty at Stanford across disciplines with interests in population studies, broadly defined.  

The Asia Health Policy Program will work with the Stanford Center for Population Research in studying the implications of demographic change in the Asia-Pacific region. For example, Karen Eggleston is undertaking comparative study of population health trends in China and India with other Stanford faculty associated with SCRP.

AHPP will also support the mission of strengthening the teaching of population studies at the undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral levels, by helping to make connections for students studying demographic change in Asia. The 2011 postdoctoral fellow in Asia health policy, Qiulin Chen, will be studying population aging in China in comparative perspective. Shorenstein APARC’s affiliation with the SCRP will also help to reinforce the new Shorenstein APARC initiative studying policy responses to population aging in East Asia, kicking off with a workshop in January 2011.

All News button
1

Mental Health in China after the Sichuan 5.12 Earthquake: An Empirical Study of Knowledge Transfer from Doctor to Patient

-

After the Sichuan 5.12 earthquake, many people in the disaster area suffered from mental health problems. To decrease morbidity from mental disease, the Sichuan authorities worked with diverse hospitals to establish a “three-level network of psychiatric prevention and treatment.” The goal was to disseminate knowledge about prevention and treatment for psychiatric conditions from doctors to recipients, especially regarding symptoms. How to disseminate such knowledge effectively and efficiently deserves study. Based on a sample of 146 doctor-recipient pairs from 52 hospitals in diverse areas of China (including Sichuan, Beijing, and Guangzhou), this study examines the impact of knowledge characteristics, the network status of the doctor, the network status of the hospital with which the doctor is affiliated, and the relationship quality between doctor and recipient on the effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge transfer from the doctor to patient. Findings indicate that high-status doctors are more effective in knowledge transfer. In addition, low-status hospitals were found to have a positive effect on knowledge transfer efficiency. In particular, results highlight the strong positive impact that the quality of the relationship between the doctor and patient has on both the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge transfer. Finally, findings suggest that the relationship between knowledge characteristics and knowledge transfer is partially mediated by the relationship quality between the doctor and the recipient.

Philippines Conference Room

(Amy) Zhe Zhang

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-9741 (650) 723-6530
0
Visiting Scholar, 2009-2011
1050-5.JPG PhD

Zhe Zhang is an assistant professor of organization management at the School of Management, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, where she also received her PhD. Her research focuses on public-private partnerships, corporate governance, and corporate social responsibility. She has published in the Journal of High Technology Management Research, International Journal of Health Care Finance & Economics, Management and Organization Review, and the International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organizations.

(Amy) Zhe Zhang Visiting Scholar, 2009-2011 Speaker Shorenstein APARC
Seminars

Analyzing Evacuation Versus Shelter-in-Place Strategies After a Terrorist Nuclear Detonation

-

Professor Wein received his PhD in Operations Research from Stanford in 1988 and has taught core MBA courses in operations management throughout his entire career, both at MIT's Sloan School of Management from 1988 to 2002 and, since 2002, at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, where he is currently Paul  E. Holden Professor of Management Science. He has also been a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at FSI since 2003.

Since 2001, Wein has analyzed a variety of homeland security problems. His homeland security work includes four papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: one on an emergency response to a smallpox attack,  a second on an emergency response to an anthrax attack, a third presenting a biometric analysis of the US-VISIT Program, and a fourth analyzing a bioterror attack on the milk supply. He has also published the Washington Post op-ed "Unready for Anthrax" (2003) and the New York Times op-ed "Got Toxic Milk?" (2005) and has written papers on port security, indoor remediation after an anthrax attack, and the detention and removal of illegal aliens.  He was also Editor-in-Chief of Operations Research from 2000 to 2005. Wein has won several awards, including the 1993 Erlang Prize for the outstanding applied probabilist under 35 years of age and the 2002 Koopman Prize for the best paper in military operations research.

Download pdf
Rebecca Slayton Affiliated Faculty at CISAC, and Lecturer in Science, Technology, and Society Commentator

Lawrence M. Wein

Graduate School of Business
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-5015

(650) 724-1676 (650) 725-0468
0
Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Management Science
CISAC Affiliated Faculty Member
Wein.jpg PhD

Lawrence Wein is the Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Management Science at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and an affiliated faculty member at CISAC. After getting a PhD in Operations Research from Stanford University in 1988, he spent 14 years at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, where he was the DEC Leaders for Manufacturing Professor of Management Science. His research interests include mathematical models in operations management, medicine and biology.

Since 2001, he has analyzed a variety of homeland security problems. His homeland security work includes four papers in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, on an emergency response to a smallpox attack, an emergency response to an anthrax attack, a biometric analysis of the US-VISIT Program, and an analysis of a bioterror attack on the milk supply. He has also published the Washington Post op-ed "Unready for Anthrax" (2003) and the New York Times op-ed "Got Toxic Milk?", and has written papers on port security, indoor remediation after an anthrax attack, and the detention and removal of illegal aliens.

For his homeland security research, Wein has received several awards from the International Federation of Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), including the Koopman Prize for the best paper in military operations research, the INFORMS Expository Writing Award, the INFORMS President’s Award for contributions to society, the Philip McCord Morse Lectureship, the Frederick W. Lanchester Prize for best research publication, and the George E. Kimball Medal. He was Editor-in-Chief of Operations Research from 2000 to 2005, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009.   

CV
Lawrence M. Wein Professor of Management Science, Stanford Graduate School of Business; Senior Fellow (by courtesy), Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Speaker
Seminars
Subscribe to Health and Medicine