Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies

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"Ask the Policy Doctor" with IHPS Professor Emeritus, Jim Kahn, MD, MPH. A new 9-week blog and live Zoom series focused on health policy and the upcoming election.
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Current COVID-19 Related Research and Initiatives
IHPS faculty are responding to policy challenges raised by the COVID-19
 pandemic with rapid-cycle research and technical assistance.
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National Clinician Scholars Program
Based at UCSF’s Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, the National Clinician Scholars Program (NCSP) at UCSF aims to train the next generation of health and healthcare change agents, prepared to work in diverse settings.
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Featured Story -

Congratulations to Rita Hamad, MD, PhD, on her selection as The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) 2020 James C. Puffer, M.D./American Board of Family Medicine Fellow!  

Rita Hamed PHDDr. Hamad is the Director of the UCSF Social Policies for Health Equity Research (SPHERE) program, and associate professor in residence in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. 

NAM fellows are chosen based on their professional qualifications, reputations as scholars, professional accomplishments, and relevance of current field expertise to the work of the NAM and the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies).  
 
Dr. Hamad will collaborate with eminent researchers, policy experts, and clinicians from across the country during her two-year fellowship. She will help facilitate initiatives convened by the National Academies to provide nonpartisan, scientific, and evidence-based guidance to national, state, and local policymakers, academic leaders, health care administrators, and the public. 

Peer effects in smoking cessation: An instrumental variables analysis of a worksite intervention in Thailand

journal abstract image

Christopher Lowenstein, William H. Dow,
Justin S. White

SSM - Population Health
September, 2020

While smoking is widely acknowledged to be a social activity, limited evidence exists on the extent to which friends influence each other during worksite-based tobacco cessation interventions. Drawing on data from adult smokers (N = 1823) in a large, cluster randomized controlled trial in worksites in Thailand, this study examines the presence of social spillovers in the decision to abstain from smoking.

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Medicaid’s Public Health Plan Options 

Jama journal abstract imageAndrew Bindman

JAMA Forum 
August, 2020

The democratic nominee for president, former Vice President Joe Biden, has made the availability of a public option (a Medicarelike health plan operated by the federal government) a central component of his health care platform. One goal of this policy is to lower costs for consumers who purchase coverage in health insurance marketplaces. Biden would also increase population coverage by making his public option available at no cost to income-eligible adults in the 12 states that have still not expanded Medicaid as a part of the Affordable Care Act. In the states that have already expanded Medicaid to low-income adults, he would allow these states to convert their expansion population to the federal public option, provided the state maintains its contribution toward the cost at the level it had been through the state’s Medicaid program.

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