Current Scholar Profiles

Cohort 13 (2006-2008):

Michael Anderson	Radha Iyengar	Aaron Panofsky
Elizabeth Bruch	Robert Mickey	Quincy Stewart
Damon Centola	Susan Moffitt	Jonathan Wand
David Frisvold	Naomi Murakawa	Wesley Yin

MICHAEL ANDERSON (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2006).  Prior to his doctoral studies, he worked as an assistant economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
	Dr. Anderson's dissertation examines the long term effects of preschool intervention, the relationship between job promotions and health, and the effects of light trucks on traffic fatalities.  His current projects analyze the relationship between restaurants and obesity and the effects of traffic congestion on heart attacks.  As a Scholar, Dr. Anderson is interested in exploring social and environmental determinants of health outcomes.
ELIZABETH BRUCH (University of Michigan Scholar) received a Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA in 2006. Her research interests span a broad array of population phenomena in which the actions of individuals and other units (such as families, couples or neighborhoods) are dynamically interdependent.
	Dr. Bruch's dissertation blended statistical and agent-based methods to examine the relationship between individuals' decisions about where to live and patterns of residential segregation. She explored how trends in income inequality and individuals' decisions about where to live combine to produce segregated neighborhoods in Los Angeles. While in the Program, Dr. Bruch collaborated with Yu Xie (U-Michigan, Sociology) on a project looking at the relationship between college education and longer term health.
They recently received an R-21 NIH grant to fund this work. At the end of her tenure in the Program, she will join the Sociology Department at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor.
DAMON CENTOLA (Harvard University Scholar) received his PhD in Sociology from Cornell University in 2006, where he was an IGERT fellow in non-linear dynamics and chaos.
	His research interests include the diffusion of innovations and cultural traits, the mobilization of social movements, and the segregation and stratification of social groups. His dissertation research, which has been published in Physica A and the American Journal of Sociology, uses techniques from statistical physics, agent-based modeling, and network theory to study the dynamics of collective action. As a Scholar, Dr. Centola is interested in focusing upon the policy implications of diffusion dynamics in health care.
DAVID FRISVOLD (University of Michigan Scholar) received a PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University in 2006. Prior to graduate school, he worked as an analyst at the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and New York.
	Dr. Frisvold's research interests include health, labor, and public economics. His dissertation examined individuals' behavioral responses to two major forms of public investment in educational opportunities: Head Start and reductions in class size. This research included a study of the impact of Head Start participation on childhood obesity. As a Scholar, Dr. Frisvold is interested in examining how educational attainment and quality influence health, and how educational policies augment these relationships.
RADHA IYENGAR (Harvard University Scholar) received her PhD in economics from Princeton University in 2006. Her primary fields of interest are labor economics and public finance.
	In her previous work, Dr. Iyengar studied the effect of the Three-Strikes law in California on the propensity to commit violent crime and the effect of mandatory arrest law on domestic violence. She has also worked extensively with the National Network to End Domestic Violence to help develop and provide empirical support for federal domestic violence policy. While in the Program, Dr. Iyengar is interested in studying the effect and effectiveness of criminal justice policy on improving mortality and morbidity in disadvantaged populations.
She is also interested in studying the relationship between labor market structures and insurance coverage and the role this relationship has in generating and preserving the health gradient in the United States.
ROBERT MICKEY (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2005, and is currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan.
	Dr. Mickey's research interests include political development, racial politics, health care reform, and political parties. In another life, he spent five years working on policy responses to ethnic conflict for a non-profit organization in Eastern Europe. He is the author of Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America's Deep South, 1944-1972 (forthcoming, Princeton University Press). His next book is tentatively entitled The Democrats’ Urban Crisis: Race, Urban Policy, and Party Politics Since 1940.
As a Scholar, Dr. Mickey As an RWJ Scholar, he is tracing the political development of the federal community health centers program from its humble origins during the War on Poverty to its puzzling expansion since 2001. He is also collaborating on an RWJ-supported study of the politics of national health insurance proposals since the New Deal.
SUSAN MOFFITT (Harvard University Scholar) holds a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan which she received in 2005.
	Dr. Moffitt's research focuses on public bureaucracies and government regulation with particular emphasis on informational approaches to regulation. She has co-authored work on policy implementation, and she is currently completing two book projects. One book considers government agencies' choices about secrecy and publicity and how those choices bear on agencies' regulatory goals. The second book is a co-authored study of ambitious social policy reform and the learning such reform requires of implementers and regulatory targets.
While in the Program, Dr. Moffitt is interested in examining the choices the Food and Drug Administration makes to promote agency and public learning about approved drugs' safety and efficacy.
NAOMI MURAKAWA (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. She received her PhD in political science from Yale in 2005.
	Her dissertation, "Electing to Punish: Congress, Race, and the American Criminal Justice State," examines the determinants of increasingly punitive federal crime policy. As a Scholar, she is interested in investigating the political failure to frame drug addiction as a public health problem.
AARON PANOFSKY (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received his PhD in sociology from New York University in 2006.
	Dr. Panofsky's dissertation is a sociological analysis of the field of behavior genetics that explores the links between its social and cultural organization and its long history of controversy. As an RWJ Scholar, he is interested in studying medical research communities to understand variations in the ways they fight for the autonomy of the scientific research process. After completing the Program, Dr. Panofsky will join the faculty of UCLA as an assistant professor in the Department of Public Policy and the Center for Society and Genetics.
QUINCY STEWART (University of Michigan Scholar) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University-Bloomington. He received his PhD in Demography and Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001.
	Dr. Stewart's research interests center around social inequality and methodology. He is particularly interested in the social processes that create and maintain inequalities in socioeconomic status, health and mortality. Dr. Stewart is currently working on several theoretical papers that critically examine the methods social scientists use to examine group difference. Additionally, he is working on several empirical projects that pertain to relative deprivation, race, socioeconomic status and health outcomes in the US and Sub-Saharan Africa.
While in the Program, Dr. Stewart is interested in examining the relationship between unfair treatment, coping responses and negative health outcomes.
JONATHAN WAND (University of Michigan Scholar) is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He earned a PhD in political science from Cornell University in 2003.
	While in the Program, Dr. Wand is interested in focusing upon individual and group decision-making in health care choices.
WESLEY YIN (Harvard University Scholar) received a PhD in economics from Princeton University in 2005. He is Assistant Professor in the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.
	Dr. Yin has worked on a wide range of topics in microeconomics. In recent years, he has studied the economics of innovation, the diffusion of medical technology, savings behavior, and information in credit markets. As a Scholar, Dr. Yin is interested in investigating models of technology adoption for both health care providers and consumers in order to study the impact of medical innovations on health behaviors and quality of medical care.
Cohort 14 (2007-2009):
Christopher Adolph	Avraham Y. Ebenstein	John N. Friedman
Rodney Andrews	Nicole Esparza	Gopi Shah Goda
Lori A. Beaman	Laura E. Evans	Leslie R. Hinkson
Tim Bϋthe	Erika Fowler	Tara Watson
	Cybelle Fox
CHRISTOPHER ADOLPH (University of Michigan Scholar) received his PhD in political science from Harvard University in 2005. He currently is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Washington (on leave).
	Dr. Adolph’s dissertation examined the relationship between monetary policy and central bankers’ career trajectories. While in the Program, he plans to address modeling of health policymaking or political sources of inequality in the distribution of social policy.
RODNEY ANDREWS (Harvard University Scholar) received his PhD in economics from The University of Michigan in 2007.
	Dr. Andrews's dissertation examined both Texas's Top Ten Percent Rule and the changes in applications and admissions at the University of Michigan due to the changes brought on by the United States Supreme Court decisions in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger.
As a Scholar, he is investigating the impact of adverse familial mental health on the human capital acquisition of disadvantaged children. He is also interested in estimating the impact of early-onset psychiatric disorders on various labor market outcomes of African-Americans and Caribbean-Americans.
LORI A. BEAMAN (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received her PhD in economics from Yale University in 2007.
	Her fields of interest include labor and development economics. Dr. Beaman's research has looked at the role of social networks in providing job information to refugees resettled in the U.S., and the impact of female political leadership on gender bias in rural India. As a Scholar, she is interested in examining the causes and consequences of health disparities among the foreign born in the U.S., and how social networks may play a role in mitigating or improving public health interventions.
In 2009, Dr. Beaman will join the Department of Economics at Northwestern as Assistant Professor.
TIM BUTHE (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of the Center for European Studies at Duke University (on leave). He received his B.A. in Government, History, and Economics from Harvard in 1995, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in 2002.
	His primary research interests are the evolution and persistence of institutions and the ways in which institutions enable and constrain actors. Substantively, his work focuses primarily on the politics of standards and regulations in the US and Europe and the politics of business confidence. He conducted a major study of the politics of product standards, including standards for medical instruments/devices (jointly with a colleague from Oxford University) and is currently completing a multi-national research survey and study of financial reporting standards – and the public and private politics of setting those standards.
His work has been published in the American Political Science Review, World Politics, Governance, Law & Contemporary Problems, and other journals. As a RWJF Scholar, he is studying the standardization of medical terminology and the political contestation over the technology for electronic medical records. .
AVRAHAM Y. EBENSTEIN (Harvard University Scholar) received his Ph.D. in economics from University of California, Berkeley in 2007.
	His fields of interest include labor economics, economic demography, and family economics.  Dr. Ebenstein’s past research examined the impact of fertility control policy in China on the sex ratio, and investigated policies that might address the “missing girls” phenomenon in Asia.  He also explored linkages between declining fertility and increasing female labor supply in Taiwan and the United States in a comparative study.  As a Scholar, he plans to study the health impacts of environmental deterioration, and the appropriate transfer policies to stem the growth of greenhouse gasses.
NICOLE ESPARZA (Harvard University Scholar) received her Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University in 2007.
	Her research interests include organizational dynamics, urban inequality, and economic sociology.  Dr. Esparza's dissertation used a multi-method approach to examine nonprofit organizations in twenty-six U.S. metropolitan areas.  This research explored how inter-organizational dynamics and social and political context affect the distribution of homeless services.  As a Scholar, she is interested in studying hospital patient “dumping,” a practice in which hospitals avoid high-cost patients by refusing to admit, transferring, and/or releasing patients in unstable conditions.
LAURA E. EVANS (Harvard University Scholar) is an Assistant Professor in the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan in 2005.
	Dr. Evans' research focuses on local politics and intergovernmental relations. She is completing a book manuscript entitled The Fight for Change inside Institutions: American Federalism and Strategies of Tribal Governments. The book examines strategies and institutions that enable American Indian tribes--and other politically marginalized groups-—to win surprising political victories.
As a Scholar, Dr. Evans has two projects underway. The first explores when local officials identify health issues as a regional concern and the dynamics behind such discourse. The second addresses the health politics of state earmarks.
ERIKA FRANKLIN FOWLER (University of Michigan Scholar) received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 2007
	Dr. Fowler’s dissertation provides one of the first systematic examinations of both the content and effect of local television news coverage of elections.  As a Scholar, she is interested in how elite cues in the media and the framing of health policy information affects public support for policy. She is also examining the determinants of health news across outlets with a particular focus on whether media diminish or exacerbate existing inequalities.  Following the Program, Dr. Fowler will join the Government Department at Wesleyan University as an Assistant Professor.
CYBELLE FOX (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received her Ph.D. in sociology and social policy from Harvard University in 2007.
	Dr. Fox’s publications have appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Sociology of Education, Political Science Quarterly, and Sociological Methods and Research.  She is co-author of Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings (Basic Books, 2004). Her dissertation examined the role of race and immigration in the development of the early American welfare state by comparing the extension of social citizenship to Mexicans, European immigrants, and Blacks in the first half of the twentieth century. While in the Program, Dr. Fox will investigate the role of immigration in the politics of health policy provision.
Following the Program, she will join the Sociology Department at UC Berkeley as an Assistant Professor.
JOHN N. FRIEDMAN (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 2007.
	His fields of interest include public economics, political economics, and contract theory. Dr. Friedman's past research investigated government policies and policymaking, examining the effect of various public programs in light of the political institutions that produce them.  Among other topics, he has written on the effectiveness of incentive schemes in the public sector and in healthcare organizations, and has explored incentives that cause legislative gridlock on political issues that cut across traditional party divisions, such as social security, healthcare, and immigration reform.
While in the Program, Dr. Friedman will continue work along this line, with a specific focus on health- and healthcare-related policies and policymaking.
GOPI SHAH GODA (Harvard University Scholar) received her Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2007.
	Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked as an actuary at a life insurance company and became a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries in 2004.  Her interests span public finance, demography, and labor economics, and her dissertation examined the labor supply incentives embedded in the Social Security program.  As a Scholar, she is expanding her research on the elderly by working on topics related to long-term care, Medicare and Medicaid.
LESLIE HINKSON (University of Michigan Scholar) received her Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University in 2007.
	Her dissertation examined how different meanings of race across institutional contexts help to explain why the racial gap in test score performance among middle school children are smaller in the military population than in the civilian world.  As a Scholar, Dr. Hinkson will study how doctors think about race and whether these ideas affect the diagnosis and treatment of patients across racial lines.
TARA WATSON (University of Michigan Scholar) received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 2003. She currently is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Williams College (on leave).
	Her dissertation included an investigation of sanitation projects on Native American Indian reservations. Dr. Watson's research broadly focuses on the determinants and consequences of residential location decisions.  She is particularly interested in how neighborhoods, peers, and local public goods affect health behaviors and outcomes.
As a Scholar, she will examine how social networks affect health decisions among immigrant groups, and how these network effects interact with public policies and programs.
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