Amanda L. Brewster, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Co-Director
Amanda L. Brewster, Ph.D., M.Sc., is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an expert in health care management, with a research agenda focused on innovation to address patients’ social needs in the context of healthcare. Her past work has documented the importance of collaboration among the diverse healthcare and social service organizations that support people with complex needs. Dr. Brewster is currently leading studies on: causes and consequences of partnerships between Community Based Organizations and health care organizations, implementing social needs case management in health care settings, and aligning regional systems for health care, public health, and social services.
Dr. Brewster's research has centered around the integration of health care and social services to address both medical and social determinants of health. Her contributions to science have provided insights to the field in the areas of hospital readmissions, making and embedding change within health care organizations, and older adult care. One example is her dissertation research which investigated quality improvement and organizational learning in the context of hospital efforts to reduce readmissions, and required collaboration among hospitals, outpatient health care providers, and social service providers in the community. Since then, her research has focused on understanding how cross-sector partnerships and innovative collaboration models influence potentially avoidable health care use and spending for older adults. She applies a range of methods to understand these issues including qualitative and mixed-methods, organizational network analysis, and longitudinal analyses leveraging large survey-based and claims-based data sets.
Hector P. Rodriguez, PhD, MPH
Co-Director
Hector Rodriguez, PhD, MPH is the Henry J. Kaiser Endowed Chair in Organized Health Systems, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Chair of the faculty group in Health Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Rodriguez earned his undergraduate degree from the University of California-San Diego, his MPH in Health Policy and Administration from UC-Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in Health Policy/ Medical Sociology from Harvard University.
His expertise is in organizational analysis and performance measurement, particularly as it relates to ambulatory care and health care disparities. His current delivery systems research focuses on organizational interventions aimed at improving ambulatory care quality, including strategies to enhance primary care team effectiveness. He has published extensively on the measurement of patient care experiences and the impact of delivery system interventions on patients’ experiences of care, including the impact of performance-based financial incentives for physician groups and physician communication training interventions. Measuring the impact of primary care teamwork on the quality of chronic illness care has been an important focus across his research projects in community clinics and health centers, the Veteran Health Administration, and private physician organizations.
Prior to his academic career, Dr. Rodriguez served as a management consultant to The Permanente Medical Group where he worked with leaders and clinicians to implement major primary care practice redesigns and evaluate their impact on patient care. He is the 2011 recipient of the AUPHA John D. Thompson Prize for Young Investigators.
Timothy Brown, PhD
Quantitative Methods Leader
Timothy Brown is Associate Research Professor of Health Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his doctorate in Health Services and Policy Analysis, with a specialization in health economics, from the University of California at Berkeley.
Dr. Brown teaches analytic methods for health policy and management focusing on econometrics, experimental and quasi-experimental design, and surveys. Dr. Brown's current research focuses on mental health, chronic pain, and organizational and medical innovation, with an emphasis on causal inference.
Mark Fleming, MS, PhD
Qualitative Methods Leader
Professor Fleming specializes in critical approaches to social and structural determinants of health, housing and homelessness, mental health and substance use crisis response, and health care services and technology. His training is in anthropology and sociology and his work uses ethnographic, community-based participatory, and mixed methods.
Jenny Gaudamuz, MS, PhD
Health Equity Program Director
Jenny S. Guadamuz is an Assistant Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Division of Health Policy and Management. She is a member of the Latinx and DemocracyFaculty Cluster.
Dr. Guadamuz is a health services researcher and pharmacoepidemiologist who uses an interdisciplinary approach to identify how structural determinants impact healthcare access, especially medications among minoritized racial/ethnic populations. Her current research focuses on health inequities across immigration status. Immigration status is a critical yet overlooked factor influencing disparities because noncitizens endure significant barriers to legal and social protections, including systemic exclusions from healthcare.
She also conducts research in the fields of drug utilization among historically excluded populations (e.g., racial/ethnic inequities in clinical trial participation), federal policies to mitigate drug risks, and the role of pharmacy accessibility in determining access to medications using electronic health records, administrative claims, surveys, and geospatial data.
Rebecca Staiger, PhD
Health Economics Program Director
Becky Staiger is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley. In her research, she combines approaches from health economics, health policy, and health services research to better understand how marginalized patients access and experience healthcare, particularly through their relationships with providers. In much of her work, she uses large national Medicaid administrative claims databases (MAX, TAF, and others) to understand the impact of policies on healthcare utilization and outcomes among this population.
Dorothy Hung, PhD, MA, MPH
CLEAR Director
Dorothy Y. Hung is Director of the Center for Lean Engagement & Research (CLEAR) in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. For two decades, Dr. Hung’s research has focused on system transformations to deliver high quality, high value U.S. health care. This includes a deep research portfolio on Lean performance improvement and its implementation, impact, scaling, and sustainment in acute care and ambulatory settings. Dr. Hung served as Principal Investigator of an R01 award, “Impact of LEAN Management on Primary Care Efficiency, Affordability, and the Patient Experience,” funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She also led mixed methods evaluations of lean workflow redesigns for interdisciplinary teams in the ED, hospital inpatient and outpatient primary and specialty care clinics, and an AHRQ ACTION II (Accelerating Change and Transformation in Organizations and Networks) study of contextual factors impacting the spread of lean across a large ambulatory care system at Sutter Health in Northern California. Dr. Hung was previously a faculty member at Columbia University School of Public Health in New York City, and affiliated faculty at UCSF Institute for Health Policy Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Health Services & Policy Analysis and an M.A. in Political Science from UC Berkeley. Dr. Hung also holds a Master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University.
Stephen M. Shortell, PhD, MPH, MBA
Senior Advisor and Founder
Stephen M. Shortell, PhD, MPH, MBA is the Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management and Professor of Organization Behavior at the School of Public Health and Haas School of Business at University of California-Berkeley. He is also Dean Emeritus of the School of Public Health at Berkeley, and holds appointments in the Department of Sociology at UC-Berkeley and the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Research, UC-San Francisco.
Dr. Shortell received his undergraduate degree from University of Notre Dame, his Master’s degree in Public Health from UCLA, and his MBA and Ph.D. in Behavioral Sciences from the University of Chicago. During 2006-07 he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
A leading health care scholar, Dr. Shortell and colleagues have received numerous awards for their research examining the performance of integrated delivery systems; the organizational factors associated with quality and outcomes of care; the development of effective hospital-physician relationships and the factors associated with the adoption of evidence-based processes for treating patients with chronic illness. He was one of the architects of the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) concept and is currently conducting research on their implementation and performance as well as on patient activation and engagement. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences; past President of Academy Health and past editor of Health Services Research. He serves as Chair of the Berkeley Forum – a private-public multi-stakeholder group of California health leaders who have developed an agenda and performance targets for payment reform and integrated delivery of care for the state. He serves on many advisory boards and committees interested in improving the performance of health care systems.