RWJF Human Capital Portfolio Launches Scholars, Fellows & Leadership Programs Web Site

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Human Capital Portfolio is pleased to launch a new Web site that makes it easier than ever to learn about the portfolio’s programs and the scholars, fellows and leaders who are improving the nation’s health and health care.

The Scholars, Fellows & Leadership Programs Web site provides essential facts about the mission, work and impact of each of 16 Human Capital programs. In addition, it showcases the diversity of the people whose innovation and hard work are creating positive change in the fields of medical research, nursing, health policy, nonprofit leadership and many others.

Read More Programs’ Progress »

• Clinical Scholars Program Promotes Call for Applications
• Community Health Leaders National Program Office Relocates to Houston
• Health & Society Scholars Welcomes NAC Members
• Health Policy Fellows Program Updates Web Site
• First Commencement Event for Ladder to Leadership
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at Meharry Medical College Appoints Executive Director
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico Co-Hosts Legislative Policy Briefing
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Ph.D. in Nursing with a Concentration in Health Policy at the University of New Mexico Featured in Video Profile

The Scholars, Fellows & Leadership Programs Web site features:

• A filtered search to help visitors identify programs of interest to them;
• Short profiles of scholars, fellows and leaders, detailing their research and community interests;
• Testimonials from scholars, fellows and leaders that describe the personal and professional impact of the programs;
• A listing of Human Capital application deadlines;
• The Leaders’ Link e-newsletter, with the latest news from the portfolio; and
• The opportunity to submit specific questions about individual programs.

Visit the Scholars, Fellows & Leadership Programs Web site at www.RWJFLeaders.org.

The Human Capital programs featured on the new Web site include:

• Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program
• Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research
• Ladder to Leadership: Developing the Next Generation of Community Health Leaders
• New Connections: Increasing Diversity of RWJF Programming
• Project L/EARN
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars^®
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leaders
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellows
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars^®
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellows
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholars
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Ph.D. in Nursing with a Concentration in Health Policy at the University of New Mexico
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Physician Faculty Scholars
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research
• Summer Medical and Dental Education Program

Clinical Scholars Program Promotes Call for Applications

The Clinical Scholars program promoted its 2009–2010 call for applications through outreach to 21 resident or residency director associations and medical specialty organizations/associations. The Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics reported that the Clinical Scholars announcement had one of the highest click-through rates of all the links in the Association’s e-mail bulletin. A blast e-mail announcement was also distributed to more than 700 residency directors from 98 accredited medical schools across the United States. In the applications received thus far, some residency programs are represented for the first time. The application deadline is February 26, 2010.

Community Health Leaders National Program Office Relocates to Houston

The national program office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leaders (CHL) award is now based at the Harris Foundation in Houston. The Community Health Leaders award will remain an RWJF-funded program, with the national program office (NPO) forming a strategic partnership with the Harris Foundation.

Janice Ford Griffin, who has administered CHL at RWJF headquarters in Princeton for the past two years, will continue to lead the program.

In reviewing areas of high population density in the United States, the locations of current CHLs and the geographic distribution of RWJF grantees, RWJF recognized an opportunity to position the NPO to align the CHL award with the nation’s shifting demographics and to expand the Foundation’s programming in the South, where there are proportionately fewer RWJF grantees compared to other U.S. regions.

Houston is the nation’s fourth-largest city and home to an array of leadership initiatives and educational institutions, including those that provide training for health professions and careers. The Harris Foundation offers a new, rich network that can help expand the outreach for nominations of new CHLs, while reaching new venues that will increase the visibility of current ones.

The CHL award elevates the leaders’ work by raising awareness of their contributions through national visibility, a $125,000 award and networking opportunities. These leaders overcome significant obstacles to tackle some of the most challenging health and health care problems facing their communities and the nation. Today, there are 173 Community Health Leaders in nearly all states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.

Health & Society Scholars Welcomes NAC Members

The Health & Society Scholars program recently welcomed three new members to its national advisory committee (NAC). They replace David Fraser, M.D., David Mechanic, Ph.D., and Alvin Tarlov, Ph.D., all of whom have been involved with the program from the beginning. The new members are:

• Muin Khoury, M.D., Ph.D., founding director of the National Office of Public Health Genomics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is rejoining the NAC after a leave of a year and a half.
• José Pagán, Ph.D., University of North Texas Health Science Center, is an alumnus of the program’s first cohort.
• Jonathan Samet, M.D., M.S., is director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Southern California (USC) and professor and Flora L. Thornton Chair for the Department of Preventive Medicine at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

Health Policy Fellows Program Updates Web Site

The Health Policy Fellows program is proud to announce that its Web site has been updated. The changes refresh the site’s design and organize program information in a more intuitive way. Check out the new site and share feedback about it at: www.healthpolicyfellows.org.

First Commencement Event for Ladder to Leadership

On December 2, 2009, Ladder to Leadership recognized its first cohort of program fellows at a commencement event in Syracuse, N.Y. The 26 fellows of the Central New York cohort spent the past 16 months learning and applying the principles of institutional leadership while maintaining their full-time jobs at nonprofit health service organizations and government agencies in the Central New York area.

Before the commencement ceremony, the fellows, working in teams of five or six, presented their "action-learning projects" that addressed a critical community health issue. The projects were:

• “Navigating the Health Care System: The Patient and Provider Perspective”—Many individuals in the Central New York community, as elsewhere, confront obstacles in accessing health care: inadequate resources or insurance, lack of transportation, little knowledge of the health care system and many more. This team is producing a documentary video that will illuminate the challenges faced by patients and providers in the local health care system, as well as demonstrating the system’s strengths, while providing information on how to access health information and health services.
• “Planning Ahead in Uncertain Times: The Meaning, Role and Necessity of Succession Planning”—The growing demand for effective managers is “hitting a wall” as the baby boomers retire; institutional memory and historical experiences are being lost at an alarming rate. The problem is heightened in the Central New York area, due in part to a regional brain drain. This team has developed a Succession Planning Tool Kit for organizations throughout the community. Based on feedback from users, the kit will be refined and updated quarterly.
• “Health Care is a Human Right”—In this team’s view, the current health reform debate frames the problem in terms of money and coverage, allowing privilege, commodity and profit interests to dominate the dialogue. The group’s mission is to increase communitywide consensus that health care is a human right by creating a Declaration of Health Rights that can help lead to a groundswell of voices to change policies and enact laws at the local, regional and national levels.
• “Patient Navigators”—People with developmental disabilities, mental health disorders and complicated physical conditions often face great challenges in integrating and coordinating their health services. The team is promoting the use of “patient navigators— to help coordinate care for these individuals and is working with area providers to develop seminars and online education tools that teach health service organizations the benefits these navigators bring both to patients and institutions.
• “End of Life”—Choices often have to be made about how, where and when a person dies, yet only 29 percent of adults have completed an advance directive. Although physician counseling greatly increases the completion rate, this discussion rarely takes place. This group proposes the position of Advance Care Planning Specialist, which would increase the quality and quantity of the discussion among physician, family and patient, likely reducing variations in end-of-life care. Measurable outcomes include the number of completed Health Care Proxies and an increase in the number of certified trainers in MOLST (Medical Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment) in the Central New York region.

Addressing the program fellows at the commencement event, RWJF Program Officer Sallie George said that “what you’ve accomplished in the program promises real rewards for the entire Central New York region; in fact, the five action learning projects you’ve carried out are making a difference for residents here already. I have no doubt that your work in the past 16 months has laid the foundation for results that will continue to benefit you, your organization and the people it serves for years to come.”

The community partner of Ladder to Leadership for the Central New York cohort was the Community Health Foundation of Western and Central New York. The next cohort, based in Cleveland, will finish the program in June 2010.

RWJF Center for Health Policy at Meharry Medical College Appoints Executive Director

Daniel L. Howard, Ph.D., has been named the executive director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at Meharry Medical College. Dr. Howard joins the Meharry community from Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., where he was a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and established and directed the Institute for Health, Social and Community Research. Prior to his tenure at Shaw, he held faculty appointments and taught at North Carolina Central University, Durham, and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. Howard was selected to lead the Center after a national search.

RWJF established the Center in March 2009 with a $9 million endowment, the largest single Foundation gift in the more than 130-year history of Meharry Medical College. The endowment is being supplemented with additional funding to support the Center’s work.

"With the Center, the Foundation is investing in a new talent pool of diverse, inspired and innovative scholars who are pursuing multidisciplinary research in health and health care for today and the future," said John Lumpkin, M.D., M.P.H., RWJF senior vice president and the director of the Health Care Group.

The Center is based on Meharry’s campus in Nashville and works in collaboration with Vanderbilt University to increase the number and diversity of those with formal training in sociology and economics who engage in health services and health policy research. Plans are underway to integrate faculty and students from Vanderbilt University’s sociology and economics departments into the Center.

Ultimately, the Center will have four components: (1) recruitment and retention of health policy students and faculty; (2) creation of a certificate program in health policy; (3) establishment of a Health Policy Scholars in Residence program; and (4) support for student and faculty research to inform policy debates. Meharry is the largest private, independent, historically Black academic health center in America.

The Center, located at one of the nation’s most respected historically Black medical institutions, will provide a platform for diverse perspectives to inform the national debate in health policy and research. By increasing diversity among health policy researchers, the Center is taking the United States a step closer to improving the health and health care of all.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico Co-Hosts Legislative Policy Briefing

The Center and the Department of Family and Community Medicine co-hosted a legislative policy briefing titled "Health Policy, Politics and Social Equity." The event was created to provide RWJF doctoral fellows and graduate students in the health and social sciences an opportunity to present their policy research to an audience and to engage with New Mexico health policy leaders. This event also served as the final project for the UNM course "Public Health 560." Lisa Cacari-Stone, Ph.D., assistant professor with the Department of Family and Community Medicine and a senior fellow at the Center noted that the briefing created an opportunity for students to develop and present a fact sheet from their research designed for policy leaders.

The Center was awarded more than $1.1 million in federal stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to establish an exploratory National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD) Center of Excellence. This award by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the NCMHD is designed to engage a broad range of partners in scientific efforts aimed at improving the health of individuals experiencing disparities in health status, while boosting the economy in communities around the country. Read more on the award.

Also, a new report by the Center analyzes the data from a recent polling of Latinos’ views on health care reform. The poll, conducted by Latino Decisions in collaboration with the RWJF Center for Health Policy and ImpreMedia, indicated a widespread consensus among the Latino electorate regarding the importance of health care reform and suggested significant support for the major elements included in the current U.S. House of Representatives bill on the expansion of coverage. Learn more about the poll and analysis.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Ph.D. in Nursing with a Concentration in Health Policy at the University of New Mexico Featured in Video Profile

The RWJF Ph.D. in Nursing with a Concentration in Health Policy was recently featured in a new video profile created for HSC-TV, an online video program that offers an inside look at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (HSC), including the UNM School of Medicine, College of Nursing, College of Pharmacy and UNM Hospitals. These video profiles showcase the people, programs, research and events that make the HSC such a dynamic and valuable resource for all New Mexicans. Nursing doctoral fellows Carolyn Montoya and Mark Siemon are featured in the video profile, as well as senior fellows Marie Lobo and Sallie Cohen. The video has been chosen as among the "Best of HSC-TV 2009" and can be viewed on YouTube in the UNM-HSC section here.