BSSR Lecture Series

"Over the Life Course: The Integration of Research, Health Care, and Policy"
Neal Halfon, MD, MPH

Neal Halfon, MD, MPH is director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities. He is a professor of pediatrics in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, health policy and management in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and public policy in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Dr. Halfon served as a member of the Board on Children, Youth and Families of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine from 2001-2006, and also served on the IOM/NRC Committee on Child Health that produced the report, Children’s Health the Nation’s Wealth. Dr. Halfon has been involved with the National Children’s Study in several capacities including as a special advisor, steering committee member, director of the NCS Health Measurement Network and principal investigator for the Los Angeles County Study Center. In 2006, the Academic Pediatric Association awarded Dr. Halfon its annual Research Award in recognition of his lifetime achievement in the field of child health research. For more than a decade Dr. Halfon has been instrumental in advancing research, policy and systems innovations focused on the healthy development of children at local, national and international level. He directed the federally funded National Center for Infancy and Early Childhood Health Policy, and he currently directs the WK Kellogg funded Transforming Early Childhood Community Systems (TECCS) Initiative that is working with several communities in Los Angeles and more than 30 others across the US. Dr. Halfon has also directed the UCLA based Blue Sky Health Initiative which has focused attention on different strategies to transform the US Health and Health Care System. In that capacity he was invited to the White House to participate in discussion about health reform in planning for the ACA and also after the ACA was passed to discuss implementation.

Leveraging the Science Health Development to Transform the US Health System: Moving from 2.0 to 3.0 In this presentation Dr Halfon will discuss the evolution of the US Health System from a model that focused on acute care and infectious diseases (1.0), to a model that focuses on chronic diseases (2.0), on the way to model that will focus on optimizing the health of all (3.0). While the "chip" for the 1.0 health system was the biomedical model, and the 2.0 system the biopsychosocial model, the driving logic of the 3.0 system will driven by new science of health development, and complex gene-environments transactions that occur across the life course. He will provide concrete examples of what 3.0 designs look like, how they will function, and where they are starting to emerge in the US and other nations. In addition, he will give his thoughts about new research directions and areas of scientific development that will need to advance in order to move our health system to its next stage.

"The ACA and the Future of Health Care Research in the U.S"
Jonathan Gruber, Ph.D.

Dr. Jonathan Gruber is a Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992. He is also the Director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a Research Associate. He is an Associate Editor of both the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Health Economics. In 2009 he was elected to the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Social Insurance. Dr. Gruber received his B.S. in Economics from MIT, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. Dr. Gruber's research focuses on the areas of public finance and health economics. He has published more than 140 research articles, has edited six research volumes, and is the author of Public Finance and Public Policy, a leading undergraduate text, and Health Care Reform, a graphic novel. In 2006 he received the American Society of Health Economists Inaugural Medal for the best health economist in the nation aged 40 and under. During the 1997-1998 academic year, Dr. Gruber was on leave as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department. From 2003-2006 he was a key architect of Massachusetts’ ambitious health reform effort, and in 2006 became an inaugural member of the Health Connector Board, the main implementing body for that effort. During the 2008 election he was a consultant to the Clinton, Edwards and Obama Presidential campaigns. During 2009-2010 he served as a technical consultant to the Obama Administration and worked with both the Administration and Congress to help craft the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In 2011 he was named “One of the Top 25 Most Innovative and Practical Thinkers