Message From the Chair
The challenges facing the US health care system never settle down. Costs of coverage and care remain high and, for many Americans, unaffordable. Notwithstanding the Affordable Care Act, disparities in coverage within the population remain glaring and the problems of the underinsured grow more worrisome.
The system too often suffers shortfalls in its quality of care and—critics allege—in the value for money it delivers. Hospitals struggle to balance margin with mission. Consolidations among provider institutions and insurers call into question familiar visions of efficiency-enhancing market competition. Innovations—clinical, technical, organizational, informational—are relentless. Mapping the interplay between the health care system and the social determinants of health raises unsettling questions about how best to allocate public resources. The efforts of the US Public Health system to convince a skeptical and increasingly distrustful citizenry of the merits of prevention and health promotion clash with “the death of expertise.” The list persists and expands over time.
The mission of our department is to generate knowledge, both analytical and practical, that illuminates the nature of US and global health care systems, seeks to explain why it looks and works as it does, and suggests proposals by which policymakers and managers may steer improvements in the health of the population.
HPM features a stellar multidisciplinary faculty, drawn from political science, economics, sociology, organizational analysis, health services and clinical research, law, and other disciplines. These scholars explore a wide range of policy issues—for instance, the effects of recent cuts in the ACA and in Medicaid for coverage, access, and quality; trends in morbidity and mortality among mothers and infants; the needs of aging populations; the evolution of managed care; the performance of the US system in cross-national perspective; the evolution of health care federalism and the potential for state-led health policy reforms; and the implications of the infusion of private equity into the system. Meanwhile, our management faculty examines the behavior of hospitals, insurers, and other complex health care organizations in the public, nonprofit and for-profit sectors and identify practical strategies that enable these institutions to improve their performance.
Our educational programs equip students with skills, networks, and practical experience needed to navigate the complex and dynamic health care environment. We are recognized nationally for our distinctive blend of classroom and professional development programs, which include a multi-hospital marketplace simulation, consulting assignments with health firms in the tristate region, internships, and case competitions, all rooted in a closely integrated and comprehensive set of core academic classes. In this website you can learn more about our MHA management programs (full-time, part-time, and executive), our MPH programs with certificates in policy and in comparative effectiveness outcomes research), and our nondegree programs in the United States and abroad.
We believe that you will find both intellectual excitement and professional fulfillment as a student in HPM. Our advisory board brings together an extraordinary group of CEOs, foundation executives, and health policy leaders from across the nation. We are a prominent player in non-degree executive education, with programs for health care leaders in settings across the globe. We are forging closer connections with the health departments in New York City and New York State. A new Center for Public Health Systems focuses on the needs of local and state Public Health Departments and on fashioning strategies to enhance their funding, staffing, outreach, and effectiveness.
What we offer in HPM can contribute crucially to your pursuit of an admirable goal—improvement of the health of the US and global populations. We hope that this website will give you useful information on our admission process and our various courses of study. Please feel free to contact us with your questions about our department and its programs. And thank you for your interest in HPM!
Warm Regards,
Lawrence D. Brown, PhD
Professor of Health Policy and Management;
Chair, Department of Health Policy and Management