After serving almost two decades as President of The Commonwealth Fund, Karen Davis, PhD, recently returned to the Johns Hopkins community, where she previously chaired the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Davis has been appointed the second Eugene and Mildred Lipitz Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Director of the Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care.
Davis is a national leader in health policy and is frequently called on to provide guidance to individual members of Congress and the Administration on issues related to health care spending, delivery systems for the uninsured and the chronically ill, the Medicare program, and the impact of a high performing health care system.
“To say we are thrilled to have Karen back at Hopkins is an understatement,” said Ellen MacKenzie, PhD, Fred and Julie Soper Professor and Chair, Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School. “Her leadership, vision and expertise will form the new bedrock of the Roger C. Lipitz Center and define the Center’s course for generations to come.”
The Eugene and Mildred Lipitz Professorship and the Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care were established by Roger Lipitz, in honor of his family’s lifelong legacy of serving the elderly, the chronically ill and underserved populations. The Center promotes multidisciplinary research and education on methods for coordinating the efforts of health care professionals, hospitals, nursing homes, home care agencies, rehabilitation facilities, emergency departments, and outpatient facilities in caring for people with chronic conditions. The Center strives to discover and disseminate practical, cost-effective approaches to providing comprehensive, coordinated and compassionate health care to chronically ill people and their families.
“I am excited about the opportunity to head the Lipitz Center, and continue its important work on developing new, innovative health care payment and delivery models in order to improve care for our nation’s most vulnerable and the disabled,” said Davis. “With the imminent retirement of much of the boomer generation, the need for new models of patient-centered care that improve quality of care while advancing efficiency is paramount.”
Chad Boult, MD, MPH, MBA, the first to fill the Eugene and Mildred Lipitz Professorship and the inaugural director of the Lipitz Center, led the Center’s pioneering work on the Guided Care model, which is recognized as the blue chip standard of care for older adults who are chronically ill (www.guidedcare.org). Boult recently left Hopkins to head the Program on Improving Healthcare Systems at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute in Washington, DC.
Sara Bleich, PhD, Promoted to Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management.
Dr. Bleich's primary research focus is on obesity. Her research aims to impact obesity prevention and control, through policy change. Her three main areas of focus include understanding the drivers of obesity, improving physician care of obese patients and developing innovative environmental strategies to reduce caloric intake.
Dr. Bleich received Paper of the Year from the Obesity Society, Most Outstanding Abstract at the International Conference on Obesity, in Sydney, Australia and was awarded the Graduate Prize Fellowship Harvard University.
Her articles and papers have appeared in the British Medical Journal, American Journal of Public Health, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Obesity, and International Journal of Obesity, among others. She has authored a book chapter on Public Opinion and Obesity for American Public Opinion and Health Care Policy and published a report on "Medical Errors: Five Years After the IOM Report," for the John F. Kennedy School of Government/Commonwealth Fund Bipartisan Congressional Health Policy Conference.