As part of health reforms announced in April 2009, China plans to expand and strengthen primary care (i.e., provision of first contact, person-focused, ongoing care over time, and coordinating care when people receive services from other providers). Other nations of Asia continue to grapple with how to promote population health and constrain healthcare spending. What is the evidence about the effectiveness of primary care in improving population health and making healthcare accessible and affordable?

In this talk, Dr. Starfield will speak about the robust evidence of the association between primary care and better health outcomes at lower cost; ways of measuring the effectiveness of primary care; how selected Asian countries compare in such rankings; and the broader implications of primary care research for health policy in Asia.

Dr. Starfield, a physician and health services researcher, is internationally known for her work in primary care; her books, Primary Care:  Concept, Evaluation, and Policy and Primary Care: Balancing Health Needs, Services, and Technology, are widely recognized as the seminal works in the field.  She has been instrumental in leading projects to develop important methodological tools, including the Primary Care Assessment Tool, the CHIP tools (to assess adolescent and child health status), and the Johns Hopkins Adjusted Clinical Groups (ACGs) for assessment of diagnosed morbidity burdens reflecting degrees of  co-morbidity.   She was the co-founder and first president of the International Society for Equity in Health, a scientific organization devoted to furthering knowledge about the determinants of inequity in health and ways to eliminate them.  Her work thus focuses on quality of care, health status assessment, primary care evaluation, and equity in health. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and has been on its governing council, and has been a member ofthe National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and many other government and professional committees and groups. She has a BA from Swarthmore College, an MD from the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, and an MPH from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.

In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

Jun Ding, “Corporate Social Responsibility in State-Owned Enterprises”

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) play an important role in China’s industrialization achievement and support social service functions in the planning era.  After China entered the marketing era, SOEs declined substantially and are in need of reform.  Ding believes SOEs should be restructured and that supernumeraries and social services functions should be separated from the primary mission of SOEs into society.  Ding’s research emphasizes recommendations found in corporate social responsibility that exists in China.

Mitsutoshi Kumagai,  “Impact on Growing On-line Video Services on Pay TV Business Model”

Recently, YouTube is not the only online video service many people enjoy.  Big players of traditional broadcasting industries are making strategic approaches in online space.  Kumagai’s presentation reviews and assesses those challenges in TV industries and its value as advertisement media.

Tadashi Ogino, “Smart Meters in the United States and Japan”

A smart meter is an advanced electric meter that measures the electricity usage in more detail than a conventional meter. Utility companies and customers can use this data for energy efficiency. A smart meter is a key component for the next generation electric grid.  Many smart meters have already been installed in the US, but smart meters are not used in Japan. Ogino analyzes the current situation of smart meter projects in the US and in Japan. He tries to understand why smart meters are not prominent in Japan.

Ayaka Takashima, "Women Entrepreneurs in Japan and the United States”

Recently in Japan, women entrepreneurs have been becoming one of the career choices for women. As an employee of Nissouken, which provides entrepreneurship program, Takashima is trying to reveal women entrepreneurs' habitat and tendency through comparative research.

In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

Hiroyuki Koyano, "The Strategy for Accerlation of Patent Examination - Focusing on Human Resource Management"

The number of patent application filings has increased across the world as a result of the globalization of the world economy. In addition, technology has become more complex and the demands for a quality patent has grown. Working against this trend, the period of patent examination has become longer, so patent offices have adopted plans to remedy the situation and accelerate patent examination. Hiroyuki Koyano attempts to compare the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) plans with those of JPO’s and analyze the problems focusing mainly on human resource management.

Mitsue Kurihara, "The Recent M&A Boom in Japan"

Mergers and Acquisitons in Japan have been booming since the late 1990s. What initially started as a method for industrial rehabilitation, today, M&A is put to use by many companies as part of their corporate strategy. Utilizing her experiences as an advisor for M&A, Kurihara researches the remarkable trend in the boom of Japanese M&A over the last ten years, as well as the future of Japanese M&A market in terms of where it should be headed.

Bhavna Sharma, “Polymorphisms in Breast Cancer Mutation Carriers: Comparative Studies in Caucasian and Hong Kong Population”

Breast cancer rates differ significantly in Asia compared to the United States and other western countries.  Lifestyle and genetic differences between these populations are probably causes of this variation.  Sharma presents findings from her study that hypothesized that the genetic breast cancer risk factors that differ between BRCA1/2 mutation carriers in Asia and the U.S. may result in a different magnitude of breast cancer risk among Asians versus Caucasians who carry BRCA1/2 mutations.

The symposium will bring together scholars and current and former government officials from Taiwan, China, and US to take stock of cross-strait relations over the past decade. It will also assess the future development of cross-strait interactions from different angles including economic, political, and security perspectives.

Kathryn Stoner-Weiss is Deputy Director, Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL. Prior to coming to Stanford, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School for International and Public Affairs. At Princeton she received the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship awarded to outstanding junior faculty. She also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University. She has held fellowships at Harvard University as well as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.

In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author of two single authored books: Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge, 2006), and Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton, 1997). She is also co-editor (along with Michael McFaul) of After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (Cambridge, 2004).

She received a BA and MA in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University. She speaks Russian and French.

CO-SPONSORED BY CREES

Although South Korea has democratized, the weakness of liberalism there as a major political ideology and value system has prevented the full flowering of democracy.  This talk will examine the historical roots of liberalism's failure to take firm root in Korean politics and society.  The causes of such weakness are to be found, in both of the two major social and political forces in Korean society,  conservatives and radical/progressive forces; neither has been or is liberal.  The resulting problems include a strong, highly centralized state and its authoritarian tendencies,  the failure to create a stable party system, civil society's weak autonomy vis-à-vis the state, and inadequate constitutional checks-and-balances among the three branches of government exacerbated by a weak judiciary.  With democratic practice falling ever farther behind the Korean people's aspirations, enhanced liberalism will not solve all problems.  Nevertheless, Dr. Choi argues, it could point the way toward a richer Korean democracy.

Jang Jip Choi is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Korea University, Seoul, Korea, and currently a Visiting Professor in the Sociology Department at Stanford University.  Specializing in contemporary political history in Korea, the theory of democracy, comparative politics and labor politics, professor Choi is the author of many books, scholarly articles and political commentaries on Korean politics,  including  Democracy after Democratization in Korea (2002),  Which Democracy? (2007), and From Minjung to Citizens (2008).  Professor Choi holds a B.A. in political science from Korea University, and  an M.A. and a Ph.D in Political Science from the University of Chicago. He was a professor in the department of political science at Korea University until his retirement in 2008.