Current Scholar Profiles

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 Franklin 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.
Cohort 15 (2008-2010):
Rene Almeling	Monique Lyle	M. Marit Rehavi
Kyna Fong	Helen Marrow	Fabio Rojas
Colin Jerolmack	Eric McDaniel	Kevin Stange
Anna Levine	Hans Noel	Patricia Strach
	Christine Percheski
RENE ALMELING (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received a Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA in 2008. Dr. Almeling's research interests include gender, economics, and medicine, and she is currently studying how gendered inequalities are produced through and reflected in market processes in medical settings.
	In her dissertation, "Egg Agencies, Sperm Banks, and the Medical Market in Genetic Material," she compares how these sexed cells, and the women and men who produce them, are culturally and economically valued, social processes that result in gendered regimes of bodily commodification. As a Scholar, she will study how gendered ideas about bodies shape the presentation of and response to genetic knowledge.  Following the Program, she will join the Sociology Department at Yale University as an Assistant Professor.
KYNA FONG (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received a Ph.D. in Economic Policy and Analysis from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in December 2007. Her research interests lie in microeconomic theory and applying microeconomic theory to questions rooted in healthcare.
	Part of her dissertation work proposes a mechanism for government-funded, market-driven prescription drug procurement that achieves near-universal access while maintaining incentives for innovation.  Her dissertation also considers performance reporting in health care, focusing on the empirical observation that introducing score cards has led to distortions in physician behavior (for example, some surgeons avoid sick patients). In such settings, she looks at optimal score card design. Her current research projects consider performance reporting and pay-for-performance in health care, as well as the role of information intermediaries in markets for healthcare goods and services.  After her time in the Program, Dr. Fong will assume a position as Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at Stanford University.
COLIN JEROLMACK (Harvard University Scholar) received a Ph.D. in sociology from the City University of New York in 2008. His primary fields of research are urban communities and environmental sociology.
	His dissertation is a comparative ethnography that examines the ways that relations with animals structure urban life.  He is currently completing a book based on the dissertation, to be published by the University of Chicago Press.  As an RWJF Scholar, he is interested in studying the relationship between animal control policies and the perceived threat of zoonotic diseases.  He is also researching how people who are socially isolated make decisions about their health, and if they suffer health disparities independent of poverty.  After completing the Program, he will assume a position as Assistant Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at New York University.
ANNA LEVINE (Harvard University Scholar) received a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2008. Her research interests include industrial organization economics and health economics.
	Her dissertation examines the impact of market structure on the returns to innovation in the biotechnology pharmaceutical industry. As a Scholar, she is interested in continuing to explore how market structure and competition impact the effects of regulation and the direction of innovation in the health care industry. Following the program, she will join the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis as an Assistant Professor.
MONIQUE LYLE (University of Michigan Scholar) received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University in 2008. Her primary research interests are in political psychology, and race and ethnicity in American politics.
	She is particularly interested in how American institutions and elites shape the psychological development and make-up of American citizens.  Some of her specific research involves examining how racial communication from political elites contributes to system-justifying ideologies and implicit attitudes associated with White supremacy.  She also is working on projects examining the extent to which racial communication and racialized political phenomena affect mental health. Dr. Lyle will assume a position as Assistant Professor in the department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University upon the completing the Program.
HELEN MARROW (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received her Ph.D. in sociology and social policy from Harvard University in 2007.
	She is co-editor of The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration since 1965 (Harvard University Press, 2007) and has also published on second-generation Brazilians in the United States and the dispersion of contemporary U.S. immigration streams into “new destinations.”  Her dissertation was a local-level comparative study of ways in which the rural South, as a new immigrant destination context, affects Hispanic newcomers’ patterns of economic, sociocultural, and political incorporation. While in the Program, Dr. Marrow will investigate the responses of healthcare institutions and workers to undocumented immigration. She is also collaborating on a project evaluating the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the health of low-income community college students.
ERIC MCDANIEL (UC Berkeley/SF Scholar) received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004 and is currently on leave from the University of Texas at Austin, where he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government.
	His research focuses on religion and politics, and racial and ethnic politics. He is particularly interested in the role of Black religious institutions in shaping Black political behavior. His forthcoming book examines the determinants of Black church political engagement. He is currently working on a project that examines the political consequences of differing religious interpretations.
HANS NOEL (University of Michigan Scholar) received his Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA in 2006 and is currently on leave from the Department of Government at Georgetown University, where he is an Assistant Professor.
	Dr. Noel's research focuses on political parties and ideology. He is the co-author of The Party Decides: Political Parties and Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform. His dissertation, "The Coalition Merchants: How Ideologues Shape Parties in American Politics", argues that ideological divisions precede and influence the coalitions that politicians form in partisan conflict. Dr. Noel's current research explores the ideological divisions over a variety of health policies, including national health care, temperance and the prohibition of alcohol, the war on drugs, the regulation of tobacco, and the regulation of trans fats.
CHRISTINE PERCHESKI (Harvard University Scholar) received her Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University in 2008. Her primary research interests are in women's employment, family demography, and social inequality.
	Dr. Percheski's recent work has considered questions of how family characteristics correlate with employment including whether becoming a father affects employment differently for married and unmarried men, how the child penalty on women's employment has changed across birth cohorts of college-educated women in professional occupations,and how the employment patterns of new mothers vary by whether they are married, cohabiting or lone mothers. In future research projects, she will consider the effects of employment policies (including parental leave and paid sick days) on maternal and child health, as well as how increasing instabilities in employment and family life place low-income families and racial/ethnic minorities at risk of health insurance coverage losses. After completing the program, she will assume a position as assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University.
M. MARIT REHAVI (University of Michigan Scholar) received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008.
	Her primary fields of interest are public finance, labor, and political economy.  Her dissertation examined the effect of politician identity, specifically gender, on policy outcomes and politician voting behavior.  She also researched the effects of tax incentives for charitable giving and the dynamics of net charitable giving.  In other work, she has studied unions and written about the evolution and design of the Trade Adjustment Assistance program.  After completing the Program, she will join the Economics Department at the University of British Columbia as an assistant professor.
FABIO ROJAS (University of Michigan Scholar)  received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 2003. He is currently on leave from Indiana University Bloomington where he is an Assistant Professor of Sociology. His research focuses on political movements and institutional change.
	His recent book, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline, was published in 2007 by the Johns Hopkins University Press.  His current work in this area examines the impact of the anti-Iraq War movement.  Dr. Rojas will use his time in the Program to work on the application of mathematical modeling to health issues. He intends to develop a technique for visualizing and analyzing complex sequence data. He also intends to develop more refined models of social networks, risk taking, and sexually transmitted disease.
KEVIN STANGE (University of Michigan Scholar) received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008. His fields of interest are labor economics, and public economics, and public policy
	His dissertation examined several different influences on post-secondary educational attainment using rich longitudinal data on a recent cohort of U.S. youth. This work quantified the option value arising from the sequential nature of schooling decisions, assessed whether fertility timing influences college dropout, and examined the importance of institutional quality to degree completion. His current research also examines the determinants of participation in social insurance programs. As a Scholar, he is interested in studying the relationship between education and health, the procedural choices of physicians and patients, and health insurance participation.   After completing the Program, he will assume a position as assistant professor in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
PATRICIA STRACH (Harvard University Scholar) received a Ph.D. in political science from University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2004 and is currently on leave from the University at Albany, State University of New York, where she is an assistant professor in the Departments of Political Science, and Public Administration and Policy.
	Her research examines the relationship between social and political institutions in American public policy.  Previously, she mapped the role of family in the policy process and the consequences for policy when social practices changed over time.  Currently, she is working on a project that looks at when and why advocacy groups that wish to solve a social problem choose to turn to government (hence making public policy) and when and why they take alternative strategies (e.g. fundraising, marketing).
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