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.

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.