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Health Care Conversation

Learn about all the different facets of health
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY Health Care Symposium

April 25-May 2, 2011

Sick in America Series Event Schedule

Keynote Address

Clinical Integration at Cayuga Medical Center: How physicians and hospitals will work together in the future

Monday April 25th
251 Malott
4:30PM-5:30PM

Rob Mackenzie, M.D., is President and CEO of Cayuga Medical Center at Ithaca, a position he has held since 2003. Prior positions have included CMC’s Vice President for Medical Affairs, President of Finger Lakes Management Associates (an association of area physicians), and Medical Director of Cayuga Area Plan, a physician/hospital organization. Dr. Mackenzie serves on the boards of directors of both regional and statewide healthcare provider associations, a regional not-for-profit insurer, a local philanthropy, and a number of other local organizations. He currently serves as chair of VHA Empire-Metro’s CEO Safety Network, a group of fifteen New York State hospital leaders dedicated to improving patient safety. Dr. Mackenzie graduated from Harvard College in 1975, from Albany Medical College in 1979, and from residency training in general and vascular surgery at the University of Toronto in 1984. He has been board certified in surgery in both the United States and Canada and is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Rob resides in Trumansburg, New York with his wife, Margaret, where he enjoys astronomy and creative writing.

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Trick or Treatment: Exploring Alternative Medicine

Tuesday April 26th
Lewis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall, Room G76
5:00PM-6:30PM

In an age of over-diagnoses and over medication, does integrative medicine provide a valid alternative? Listen to a panel of scholars, doctors, and alternative medicine professionals discuss the issues of alternative medicine in the modern U.S. health care system.

	Adam Burke, Ph.D., M.P.H., L.Ac., is a professor in the Department of Health Education and director of the Institute for Holistic Health Studies at San Francisco State University; he is also a licensed acupuncturist and a teacher of meditation. Dr. Burke holds advanced degrees in social psychology and health education from the University of California, and received his acupuncture training in San Francisco and in Sichuan, China. Among his other commitments, Dr. Burke has been co-chair of the Alternative and Complementary Health Practices section of the American Public Health Association, chair of the California Acupuncture Board, and a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded investigator.
	Esther Sackett, M.P.A., is the Clinical Program Coordinator for the Department of Integrative Medicine's inpatient services at Beth Israel. Her primary goal is the expansion of integrative programs and services into the hospital setting, building upon the successes of integrative outpatient care at the Center. In this role, Esther works collaboratively with practitioners at the Center and in other departments throughout the hospital to develop and implement programs that are holistic and patient-centered. She is also involved in the program evaluation accompanying these interventions and is interested in developing research proposals to study the facilitators and barriers to implementing integrative approaches in the inpatient hospital setting. Esther has a Masters of Public Administration in Health Policy and Management from NYU's Wagner School of Public Service and a BA in Anthropology from Ithaca College. She is also a certified facilitator of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
	Deanna Berman, N.D, C.M., a naturopathic doctor and certified midwife, is an integrative medicine practitioner in Ithaca, NY. At Bastyr University, a four-year, post-graduate, medical school just outside of Seattle, Washington, she received two years of basic medical science education and in-depth training in clinical nutrition, botanical medicine, and a wide range of alternative therapies including naturopathic manipulation, massage, cranio-sacral therapy, Chinese medicine, homeopathy, and more. Additionally, she completed an extra year of coursework at Bastyr University to become a midwife. With her knowledge of herbal medicine and nutritional supplements in addition to her pharmacology training, she is uniquely qualified to understand drug-herb, and drug-nutrient interactions. As a certified midwife, who focuses on natural health solutions, her understanding of women's hormonal and endocrine issues is both extensive and unique.

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Interactive Health Fair

Tuesday April 26th
Ho Plaza
11AM - 2PM

The interactive Health Fair is a showcase of Cornell student organizations that are focused on various topics in healthcare, including mental and physical health. Taking place on Ho Plaza, the Health Fair is an excellent opportunity where members of the Cornell community will be able to learn more about the diverse offerings Cornell provides on healthcare education and awareness through demonstrations and interactive activities.

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Global Health Delivery: Recognizing Interdisciplinary Drivers of the Patient-Provider Interface

Wednesday April 27th
131 Warren Hall
5:00PM - 6:30PM

The complexity of the global health landscape has prompted the need for multi-sector efforts across various disciplines, including engineering, agriculture, IT, and education. Come listen to Dr. Marissa Wagner, who works with the Earth Institute at Columbia University's health team, a she speaks on the effective impact of agricultural interventions on child and maternal health. She will also highlight the influence of computer scientists and engineers in transforming communication and decision-supporting processes in health systems. Join us as we hear first-hand from a prominent figure in the global health field, how she and her health team have used multidisciplinary efforts to tackle health issues in the developing world.

Marissa Wagner, M.D., works with the Earth Institute at Columbia University's health team, most recently on a health systems development project in Nigeria. Her work with the Earth Institute builds on her experience as a surgical resident at Brigham and Women's in Boston, MA, as well as previous work with the Malaria Research and Training Center in Bamako, Mali, the Schistosomiasis Research Group in Cambridge, UK, and the Lab of Parasitic Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.

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The Future of Stem Cells: Where Are We Headed?

Thursday April 28th
228 Malott
5PM-6:30PM

Come join distinguished stem cell scholars and researchers, including several Cornell professors, in a panel discussion surrounding the future of stem cells and stem cell research. Our discussion features notable speakers from various disciplines to offer the audience not only an unbiased opinion, but also a well-rounded informative discussion.

	Lorenz Studer, M.D., is a professor in the Developmental Biology department at the Sloan-Kettering Institute studying the use of stem cells to develop radically new therapies for degenerative disease and cancer. In particular, he is interested in using stem cells to repair or replace tissues that have been damaged through disease. Both embryonic and adult stem cell types are used in the lab, but currently, work has been focused on the biology and use of human embryonic stem cells. Current projects include neural differentiation of embryonic stem cells, mesenchymal differentiation of embryonic stem cells, nuclear transfer and parthenogenetic stem cells, neural stem cells, and high thoroughput screens in human embryonic stem cells.
	Alexander Nikitin M.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Pathology and Leader of the Stem Cell Program at Cornell University. His main research interest is understanding cancer pathogenesis through studying the role of stem cell compartment in carcinogenesis, epithelial ovarian cancer pathogenesis, and modeling metastatis. In addition, his laboratory has recently integrated technology-oriented research through cross-disciplinary collaborations such as biomedical engineering and applied physics to apply cutting-edge technology to cancer research.
	Robert Weiss, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Cornell. His research involves studying fundamental mechanisms of importance to stem cells. His laboratory focuses on investigating mammalian genome maintenance pathways and their functions at various levels. Working with mouse cell Hus1 genes, he observes how the mammalian DNA checkpoint operates.
	Vimal Selvaraj, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animal Science at Cornell. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell and his Bachelor of Veterinary Science from Madras Veterinary College. Dr. Selvaraj’s research interests reside in the basic biology of stem cells. He works with both Embryonic Stem Cells and Induced Pluripotent Cells, which are adult somatic cells reprogrammed in a primordial embryonic stem cell-like state. His objectives include examining the establishment of the pluripotent network and "genesis" of embryonic stem cells in the blastocyst, while exploring new applications for stem cells in humans and animals.
	Michael Kotlikoff, Ph.D., V.M.D., is the Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell. He received his V.M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and Ph.D. in physiology from University of California Davis. Before becoming Dean, he has served and even established numerous facilities and committees here at Cornell, such as the Cornell Core Transgenic Mouse Facility and Neurosciences Steering Committee. In addition to his duties as Dean, Dr. Kotlikoff continues to work in his laboratory, researching cardiac and smooth muscle biology.

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Sick of All the Insincere: Recognizing Religious and Cultural Identities in an Increasingly Diverse Patient Population

Thursday April 28th
228 Malott
7:30PM-9:00PM

"Sick of All the Insincere: Recognizing Religious and Cultural Identities in an Increasingly Diverse Patient Population" is an educational film on the importance of religio-cultural competency in health care practice made by the Dial of Ahaz Society of Cornell University. The film will premiere at Cornell as part of the Sick in America Conference on Thursday, April 28, 2011. Please visit the following link for the promotional video. Following the showing of the film will be a presentation by Dr. Carole Siegel from the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research.

Carole E. Siegel, Ph.D., heads the Statistics and Services Research Division of the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, is a biostatistician and health services researcher and has conducted several projects on cultural competence for behavioral health care organizations. She conducts large data set disparity research and has developed funding allocation formulas to promote equity among both providers and consumers. She is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine where she teaches research methods, epidemiology and mental health policy courses. She currently heads the New York State funded Center of Excellence in Culturally Competent Mental Health. She headed the NIMH funded Center for the Study of Issues in Public Mental Health for 11 years, a research center that addressed service and support system problems of persons with mental illness. She has received several research grants from USHHS agencies: NIMH, AHCQR and SAMHSA. A recently completed NIMH grant tested the psychometric properties of a cultural competency instrument for delivery of care in behavioral health care organizations.

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The Future of Health Care Reform

Monday May 2nd
251 Malott
5:30pm-7:00pm*

Join Cornell professors and health care professionals in a panel discussion on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the challenges it faces in America’s new political environment, and how we can work toward a creative solution to improve health care in America.

Click here to submit a question for the health care reform panel discussion!

	Roger Battistella, Ph.D., is an Emeritus Professor of Health Policy and Management in the Sloan Graduate Program in Health Administration at Cornell. He is the author of Health Care Turning Point: Why Single Payer Won't Work, where he provides an insightful analysis of the complexity of health care policy in the U.S. and a valuable synthesis of the economic, political, demographic, structural, and cultural aspects of our current health care dilemma.
	William White, Ph.D., is the Director of the Sloan Program in Health Administration. He received his B.A. from Haverford College and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. Prior to coming to Cornell, he taught at the University of Illinois in Chicago and Yale University. His primary research interest is health economics and his professional career has focused on the organization and operation of health care markets.
	Dr. Oliver Fein, M.D., is a general internist, a Professor of Clinical Public Health and the Associate Dean for Affiliations at Weill Cornell Medical College. He holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College and earned his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He is chair for Physicians for a National Health Program Metro New York chapter and was recently elected to the Board of the American Public Health Association. Dr. Fein’s work has focused on health system delivery reform on both national and local levels. On the national level, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow from 1993 to 1994, where he worked as a legislative assistant in the office of Senate Democratic Majority Leader, George Mitchell. In this position, he was involved with developing policy on healthcare benefits, graduate medical education, healthcare quality, public health, medical malpractice, antitrust and remedies and enforcements. On the local level, Dr. Fein has been concerned with access to healthcare for vulnerable populations and the role of the Academic Health Center. Dr. Fein’s health services research interests include health system reform and national health insurance. He has done work in ambulatory case-mix measurement, risk adjustment, different methods of measuring social class and health inequalities, and comparing the role of primary care in health system reform in the United States and the United Kingdom.
	Sinan Unur, Ph.D., earned his Ph.D. in Consumer Economics at Cornell University in 1999. His work focused on using experimental economics methods to analyze resource allocation mechanisms in the family. He was a senior lecturer with the Department of Policy Analysis and Management until 2009 where he taught classes on microeconomics, statistics and economics of regulation as well as doing consulting work involving Medicare Part D pricing and policies. He currently works as a private consultant on various projects including one analyzing pricing of medical products and services in the U.S. using Medicare data. He is a founding member of the Program on Freedom and Free Societies at Cornell University. Dr. Unur favors market based policies that put consumer choice and individual freedom in the forefront to spread access to quality health care at affordable prices.

*Please note that the "The Future of Health Care Reform" event will be held from 5:30-7pm, not 5-6:30pm as advertised on some quarter cards, e-mails and lecture slides.

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Events

Monday April 25th
Keynote Address

Tuesday April 26th
Trick or Treatment: Exploring Alternative Medicine

Tuesday April 26th
Interactive Health Fair

Wednesday April 27th
Global Health Delivery

Thursday April 28th
The Future of Stem Cells: Where Are We Headed?

Thursday April 28th
Sick of All the Insincere

Monday May 2nd
The Future of Health Care Reform

Past Events

Sick in America 2010 Events

Sick in America 2009 Events