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Discovery Across Disciplines

Highlighting the exciting and engaging work of more than 50 of the University’s interdisciplinary research centers and institutes.

Thursday, October 16, 2014 | 2:00 – 4:00 P.M. | 3rd Floor, Coffman Memorial Union

Many intellectual, social, and practical problems transcend the scope of a single field of study. Creative solutions to these types of complex problems often require the integration of multiple perspectives, methods and concepts. The centers and institutes at the University of Minnesota provide opportunities for researchers to collaborate across disciplines, and to seek the answers to some of the world’s toughest challenges.

The Discovery Across Disciplines showcase will highlight the exciting and engaging work of more than 50 of the University’s interdisciplinary research centers and institutes. Take time to connect with others across campus who share your research and scholarly interests at this poster-session-style event. Browse the exhibits, interact with researchers, network with colleagues, and learn about opportunities for involvement in interdisciplinary inquiry. Graduate students, postdocs, and new and relatively new faculty are especially encouraged to attend.

For more information, visit http://www.grad.umn.edu/news/discoveryacrossdisciplines or contact gsdean@umn.edu.

Seminar-Medical Providers, Payers, and Patients

The Path Forward: Medical Providers, Payers, and Patients

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

12:00 - 2:00 PM

Cowles Auditorium

Humphrey School of Public Affairs

Register now!

The cost and access to medical providers is a pressing challenge as health reform proceeds. How will consumers respond to the scope of the provider networks offered by insurers? Will consumers recoil against narrow networks, as they did several decades ago when managed care was introduced? Another set of challenges relates to the adequacy of medical care as demand rises. How well are Minnesota physicians and hospitals meeting medical care demand? How should the medical workforce be developed to handle the new and growing demands into the future? Still another challenge relates to provider pricing and the overall costs to the health care system. Join us for discussion of these questions with national and local experts. The conversation will be moderated by Professor Larry Jacobs.  

Program:

The Twin Cities Health Care Market in National Context

Noam Levey, National healthcare reporter, Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau

Minnesota Stakeholders 

Jim Chase, President, Minnesota Community Measurement

Keith Halleland, Counsel, Southern Prairies Community Care

Representative Tara Mack 

Ken Paulus, CEO, Allina

Workshop-Simulation

Introduction to Health Systems Simulation for Policy

This webinar is part one of a two-part series titled, Simulation as a Tool to Inform Health Policy. Please register for each webinar separately.

Thursday, October 23, 2014, 1:00-2:30 p.m. EDT
Background: Simulations are mathematical models that combine evidence from research and other sources to approximate how real-life systems behave under particular conditions. They can help researchers and policymakers in several ways.  These models help translate research and other evidence into a form that decision makers can readily understand. One can experiment virtually with policy levers or other interventions to understand how they affect outcomes of interest.  Simulation can be a tool for discussion, collaboration, and ‘big picture’ thinking among researchers, analysts, and policymakers throughout the policymaking process. And finally, simulation can help researchers identify policy- relevant holes in the research literature. 

Overview:  This free webinar is the first in a two-part introductory series for health services researchers at all stages of their careers, public and population health professionals, and those from the policy arena interested in learning about simulation models and how to use them.

In the first webinar, Patty Mabry, with the National Institutes of Health, will provide an overview of simulation models and how they can help us better understand public health and health care systems. Subsequent speakers will draw on specific examples to review the three major types of health systems simulation models, which differ in their emphases. Bobby Milstein, from The Fannie E. Rippel Foundation, will discuss system dynamics models, which focus on interactions among populations within a system. This type of model is particularly useful in understanding ‘feedback loops,’ the cyclical interactions among the different populations that make up a system. Danielle Varda, from the University of Colorado Denver, will discuss network analysis, a tool that focuses on the structure of relationships between individuals or groups and can be used to understand specific connections and collaboration among subgroups in a community.  Finally, Ernest Moy, with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and current AcademyHealth Innovator-in-Residence, will discuss agent-based modeling, a tool that focuses on demonstrating the interaction among individual ‘agents’ (i.e. either people or groups in a complex system)  and how they can both change and be changed by their environment.

Faculty: Michael Gluck, Ph.D., M.P.P., AcademyHealth (moderator); Patty Mabry, Ph.D., National Institutes of Health; Bobby Milstein, Ph.D., M.P.H., The Fannie E. Rippel Foundation; Danielle Varda, Ph.D., University of Colorado Denver; Ernest Moy, M.D., M.P.H., Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Learning Objectives:
This free webinar will provide:

• An overview of simulation and how it can be applied to public health and health care systems.
• A description of the three main types of simulations and their uses in public health and health care.
• An understanding of when, why, and how simulations can improve policymaker and researcher understanding of complex policy decisions.

Registration price: Free
Course Level: 101 (Introductory)



The second webinar, Effective Use of Simulation to Guide Health Policy will take place on Friday, November 14, 2014 from 1:00-2:30pm EDT and will discuss experiences and lessons learned for using and communicating about models to policymakers. Speakers include Ross A. Hammond, Ph.D., The Brookings Institution; Karen J. Minyard, Ph.D., R.N., Georgia Health Policy Center; Dylan George, Ph.D., U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; and J. Jaime Caro, McGill University. Please click here for more information or to register.

Acknowledgement: This webinar series is hosted by AcademyHealth’s Translation and Dissemination Institute and Public Health Systems Research program, with support from Kaiser Permanente and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Workshop-Big Data

Big Data and Big Crowds: Getting Useful Data from Text Fields Using Large Data Sets

Wednesday, October 15, 2014, 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. EDT

Overview: Abstracting information from imaging reports is traditionally done by trained researchers who review the report text and record the presence or absence of key words or findings. The standard abstraction method is laborious, time-consuming, and expensive, and the alternative method, natural language processing (NLP), requires special expertise to implement and tailor the algorithm.  A third, more recent, option is crowd-sourcing through Amazon mTurk, a marketplace where people can sign-up to work on human intelligence tasks (HITs).
This webinar will review three approaches for abstracting data from imaging reports based on the experiences of the Back pain Outcomes using Longitudinal Data (BOLD) Project. The webinar will also discuss strategies for working with and evaluating the effectiveness of abstraction conducted by trained researchers and individuals in the Amazon mTurk marketplace.
The BOLD Project established a cohort of 5,239 senior patients with back pain recruited from primary care settings in health systems that are part of the HMO Research Network. The BOLD-Extension of Research (BOLDER) Project provided for 18 month extension of the project. Several projects that are part of BOLDER require collecting not only quantitative variables, such as counts of particular CPT codes, but also information buried in text fields such as radiology reports. BOLDER will yield approximately 6,400 text-based spine imaging reports.
Faculty: Janna Friedly, M.D., University of Washington (moderator); Bryan Comstock, M.S., University of Washington; and Jeffrey (Jerry) Jarvik, M.D., M.P.H., University of Washington  
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, participants will be able to: 

• Review the BOLD/BOLDER registry
• Review the approaches for abstracting data from imaging reports
• Describe the accuracy, cost, and time of Amazon mTurk and NLP compared with the trained researcher abstract.

Registration Price: Free 
Course Level: 101 (Introductory)


Acknowledgement: This webinar is brought to you by AcademyHealth's EDM Forum, a cooperative agreement from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Grant #U18 HS022789-01. To learn more about the EDM Forum, please visit www.edm-forum.org.

10/10 meeting

RSVP by Sunday October 5th for lunch.

(vegetarian and/or salad available by request)

Attendance welcome even if you leave early or arrive late.

HPM Student Research Group Meeting

Friday, October 10th, 2014, 11:30 – 1:00

Mayo D-330

AGENDA

Student research:

Viengneesee Thao, "Variation in Cost of Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation"

        Gilbert Gonzales, "Using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) for Health Services Research"

Student business:

Updates from Student Representative Natalie Cherba