For Pre-Doctoral Students

Anna Davis, MPH
Graduate School and Degree: Boston University, MPH in Epidemiology
Undergraduate School and Degree: New York University, BA in Linguistics

Career and Educational Plan:
I am interested in delivery of high-value, accessible care, particularly for disadvantaged populations. This includes efforts to redesign and implement systems of care, such as payment reforms or clinical guidelines, in the U.S. health care marketplace. I am currently a graduate student researcher at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research; my projects  include a study predicting future Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) Payments to California hospitals after health care reform to assess whether increases in revenue from all purchasers will balance the Medicaid DSH reductions in 2019.  For three years prior to beginning the PhD program, I worked as project director/project manager for the Health Economics and Evaluation Research Program at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, where I focused on research and evaluation studies in the areas of safety-net services, access to care for low-income populations, health system integration, and disease management programs for chronically ill Medicaid beneficiaries.

Sarah Friedman, MSPH
Graduate School and Degree: University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, MS in Health Policy and Management
Undergraduate School and Degree: Bryn Mawr College, AB in Mathematics and Economics

Career and Educational Plan:
As a PhD student in Health Policy and Management, I will expand my ability to conduct rigorous health services research and seek out impactful applications of these skills. In addition to developing a strong quantitative and research design foundation on which I can draw throughout my career, I hope to develop policy expertise and build strong mentor relationships with advising faculty. I intend to continue my work investigating how women veterans use VA health services for primary care, mental health care, and gender specific care. Other areas of interest include how health care organizations respond to economic incentives and how California is implementing ACA and other reform initiatives.  In my career, I hope to have opportunities to inform policy and practice through research. 

Lauren Gase, MPH
Graduate School and Degree: Emory University, Behavioral Sciences and Health Education
Undergraduate School and Degree: University of California Santa Barbara, BS in Biopsychology

Career and Educational Plan:
I am entering into the PhD in Health Policy and Management after completing my MPH at Emory University and spending the past four years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At CDC, I worked on a variety of evaluation and policy analysis projects, including development of the National Prevention Strategy. As a part of the CTSI TL1 fellowship, I am working with investigators at CTSI to assess the potential health impacts of implementing policies to reduce truancy. This assessment includes identifying pathways through which education can influence health, assessing the impact of diverse educational policies, and engaging the community to identify needs and concerns. My research interests include evaluating the impacts of population health policies, identifying ways to effectively work across-sectors to use non-health policies (especially education policy) to promote health, and developing multi-level models to understand the impact of the social determinants of health.

Charleen Hsuan, JD
Project: Organizational Determinants of Noncompliance with Two Federal Health Care Laws
Mentor: Hector Rodriguez, PhD, MPH - UCLA
Graduate School and Degree: Columbia University, JD
Undergraduate School and Degree: Yale University, BS in Molecular Cell Developmental Biology

Project Description:
My dissertation studies organizational determinants of noncompliance with two federal health care laws.   First, the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA) requires pharmaceutical clinical trials to register on a trial registry website and to post certain results after data collection completion.  Yet, compliance with the FDAAA is not actively monitored and enforced and remains low. I will focus on whether organizational context, including the type of organization or the nature of the pharmaceutical trial, differentially impact timely registration and reporting of clinical trial results before and after the FDAAA.  Second, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires most hospitals to appropriately screen, stabilize, or transfer uninsured patients.  Yet inappropriate transfers occur. I will explore the differential impact of not-for-profit status and the role of legitimacy pressures as drivers of potentially inappropriate patient transfers by hospitals before and after the 2003 regulations.

Diane Tan, MSPH
Graduate School and Degree: University of California Los Angeles, MS in Community Health Sciences
Undergraduate School and Degree: University of California Los Angeles, BA in History

Career and Educational Plan:
Upon completing the PhD program in Health Policy and Management at UCLA, I hope to pursue a research career in a non-academic setting, such as at a think tank or a government agency. Ultimately, I would like to lead research projects that will help shape and better inform policies that affect access to care among vulnerable populations, especially among persons living with HIV/AIDS in the United States. At the moment, I am interested in how the Medicaid expansion under the ACA will affect access to care among newly insured persons living with HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles County. While at UCLA, I hope to develop a strong methodological background and pursue a cognate in health outcomes. I expect to pursue post-doctoral training in health metrics or outcomes research to further refine my research skills and understand how to better measure certain health outcomes.