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.

Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response: Use of Information Technologies and Decision Support Systems

The Nation's capacity to respond to bioterrorism depends in part on the ability of clinicians and public health officials to detect, manage, and communicate during a bioterrorism event. Information technologies and decision support systems (IT/DSSs) have the potential to aid clinicians (e.g., physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, and respiratory therapists) and public health officials to respond effectively to a bioterrorist attack.

Analysis of Patient Safety Practices

Patient safety has received increased attention in recent years, but mostly with a focus on the epidemiology of errors and adverse events rather than on practices that reduce such events. Researchers from PCOR and the University of California-San Francisco worked together on a project funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to develop an evidence-based compendium of promising patient safety practices for hospitalized patients. The investigators evaluated the level of evidence available in the scientific literature to support specific methods to improve patient safety.

Assessment and Treatment of Hypertension: Evidence-Based Automation (ATHENA)

Hypertension is common, harmful and undertreated. The Assessment and Treatment of Hypertension: Evidence-Based Automation (ATHENA) project seeks to improve the treatment of hypertension through a computer-based decision support system that analyzes clinical information about each patient to generate recommendations for managing hypertension. Physicians receive customized treatment recommendations, together with a rationale for the recommendations, at the time of patient visits.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

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This unit contains lectures, originally given at Stanford University by leading scholars , and accompanying lessons strive to educate students about the past, present, and future implications of weapons of mass destruction by introducing them to the history, policies, ideologies, and strategies involved in decision making in this area.

Mark W. Smith

202-679-7832 (voice)
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Vice President, Transition Services at CATHEXIS
mark_smith.jpg PhD

Health Economist Mark Smith is a Vice President at CATHEXIS and a Stanford Health Policy Adjunct Affiliate. From 2001-2011 he was an economist at VA Palo Alto. At Truven Health Analytics (2012-2016) and IBM Watson Health (2016-2020) he led projects in quality measurement and reporting and provided technical assistance to state Medicaid agencies.   

His research focuses primarily on quality measurement, mental health and substance abuse, and economic analyses.  He led a team that collaborated with Stanford Health Policy and others to develop health care quality indicators based on emergency department services. International projects have included implementation of health care quality measurement in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and determining predictors of sustainability in water-quality improvement projects in Nicaragua.  He earned a B.A. at Oberlin College and M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees at Yale University, all in economics.  

Adjunct Affiliate at the Center for Health Policy and the Department of Health Policy

Defining Your Research Project

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117 Encina Commons - Second Floor Conference Room

Mary K. Goldstein

VA Palo Alto Health Care System Medical Service (111) 3801 Miranda Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94304;

Encina Commons, 615 Crothers Way Room 210, Stanford, CA 94305-6006

(650) 493-5000,,1,,1,62105
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Professor, Health Policy
Professor, Medicine (by courtesy)
mary_goldstein_profile.jpg MD, MS

 

Mary K. Goldstein is a Professor of Health Policy and a core faculty member at the Department of Health Policy and the Center for Health Policy, and the Director of the Geriatrics Research Education and Clinical Center (GRECC) at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. She directs the Primary Care Policy and Practice Advancement program at PCOR, the Stanford/VA Palo Alto Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program, and the Special Fellowship Program in Advanced Geriatrics at VA Palo Alto. She also serves as associate director for the Physician Post-Residency Fellowship Program in Health Services Research and Development, and for the Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medical Informatics, both at VA Palo Alto Health Care System.

Goldstein studies innovative methods of implementing evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for quality improvement. She leads the ATHENA Decision Support System project that has developed and implemented an automated clinical decision support system for primary care clinicians, using hypertension as a model, and now extended into several other clinical domains.  Goldstein's research also explores older adults' health preferences (health utility) for application to cost-effectiveness analysis.

Goldstein is a fellow of the American Geriatrics Society, and an emerita of the Society's board of directors. Goldstein has received a number of honors and awards including an Advanced Career Development award from the Department of Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) program.  She received a BA in philosophy and an MD, both from Columbia University, and completed her residency in family medicine at Duke University Medical Center. At the Stanford School of Medicine she completed an AHRQ-funded fellowship and an MS in health services research.

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Mary Kane Goldstein Associate Professor Speaker
Seminars

Drugs and Public Health in Developing Countries

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Dr. Chowdhury is a vascular surgeon and pioneering public health leader from Bangladesh who wrote "The Politics of Essential Drugs: The Makings of a Successful Health Strategy: Lessons from Bangladesh." In 1971, Dr. Chowdhury left England to return to what was then East Pakistan and join the war of liberation for Bangladesh. He helped establish a field hospital for freedom fighters and refugees, which lead to the development Gonoshasthaya Kendra (GK) or "The People's Health Center." GK has trained more than 7,000 barefoot doctors, and serves 1,000 villages in 14 Bangladeshi districts. A pharmaceutical factory was established by GK in 1981 which produces medicines on the World Health Organization's essential medicines list; employs 1,500 people and has an $11 million annual budget. One-half of its profits are reinvested and the other half go to GK's other projects. In 1985, Dr. Chowdhury and GK were awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award (sometimes called the Asian Nobel Peace Prize) and in 1992, the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the alternative Nobel Prize). Dr. Chowdhury was instrumental in convincing the Bangladesh government to adopt a National Drug Policy in 1982. This controversial policy promotes essential medicines and discourages the use of drugs with little therapeutic value. GK hosted the People's Health Assembly in December 2000, which challenged global health organizations to improve public health care for the poor. Dr. Chowdhury is this year's International Honoree of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health Heroes.

Philippines Conference Room

Dr. Zafrullah Chowdury Vascular Surgeon Speaker The People's Health Center, Bangladesh
Seminars

Intelligent Critiquing of Clinical-Guideline Application

This project aims to develop a standardized computational framework for clinical practice guideline specification that will allow text guidelines to be easily translated into computable formats by clinical domain experts. These computable guidelines will then be directly applicable to real-time clinical decision support and to retrospective quality assessment of electronic medical records.

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