Research and Policy Committee

CHRT's Research and Policy Committee is charged with ensuring the relevance and integrity of CHRT-sponsored research and its value to policy makers in the state of Michigan and nationally.

Eve Kerr, MD, MPH (chair)

Professor, Internal Medicine
University of Michigan Medical School

Director, Center for Clinical Management Research, a VA Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence
Research Director, VA Quality Enhancement Research Initiative for Diabetes Mellitus
VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System

Eve A. Kerr, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, director of the Center for Clinical Management Research, a VA Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence, and research director of the VA Quality Enhancement Research Initiative for Diabetes Mellitus. Kerr received her medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco and completed her internship and residency in general medicine at University of California, Center for the Health Sciences, Los Angeles, Calif. She subsequently completed the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and received a Masters of Public Health from UCLA. In 1996, she joined the faculty of the U-M Department of Internal Medicine and the Ann Arbor VA Center for Clinical Management Research. She was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2009.

Kerr is a nationally recognized expert in research on performance measurement and quality improvement, with a successful federally-funded research program since her arrival to Michigan. In addition, she has served on the Medical Student Admissions Committee, the Internal Medicine Promotion and Tenure Committee, the Interim Leadership Team for the proposed Health Services Research Institute, and the UMHS ADVANCE committee, and currently chairs the Research and Policy Committee for the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation (CHRT). She has served as a research and career mentor to numerous fellows and junior faculty and has a particular interest in helping junior women faculty craft successful academic careers.

Caroline S. Blaum, MD, MS

Associate Chief, Division of Geriatric Medicine
Professor, Internal Medicine
University of Michigan Medical School

Associate Director for Clinical Affairs, Geriatrics Center
Research Professor, Institute of Gerontology
University of Michigan Geriatrics Center & Institute of Gerontology

Research Scientist, Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center
VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System

Caroline Blaum is a professor and practicing geriatrician at the University of Michigan and a research scientist at the VA Geriatrics Research and Education Center in Ann Arbor. She earned her medical degree and a master’s degree in clinical research design and statistical analysis from the University of Michigan. Her specialty is care delivery models for older adults and she is currently leading the University of Michigan’s “Pay for Performance” Medicare Demonstration Project. Her research on geriatric syndromes and frailty, diabetes in older adults, disability, and long-term care is supported by the National Institute on Aging, the VA Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Dr. Blaum’s extensive national policy service includes membership on the expert panel for Assessing Care of the Vulnerable Elderly, and service as a U.S. Public Health Services Primary Care Policy Fellow. She sat on the panel that developed the American Geriatrics Society (AGS)/California Health Care Foundation Guidelines for the Care of Diabetes in the Elderly, and is the AGS Representative to the Physician Consortium for Practice Improvement. She chairs the AGS Quality Practice Management Committee, is a member of the National Quality Forum’s Steering Committee on Hospital Outcomes and Efficiency, and a member of the Executive Committee of the AMA’s Physician Consortium for Quality Improvement.

Matthew Davis, MD, MAPP

Associate Professor, Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases
Associate Professor, Internal Medicine
Associate Professor, Public Policy
University of Michigan Medical School & Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Matthew M. Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., is associate professor of pediatrics and associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Health System and associate professor of public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan. He earned his M.D. cum laude from Harvard Medical School and trained in pediatrics and internal medicine at the Children's Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He trained in public policy and health services research as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar and Irving Harris Child Policy Fellow at the University of Chicago.

Davis joined the U-M faculty in 2000. His current work research focuses on three major areas of child and family health policy: (1) vaccines and vaccine financing, (2) government health programs and regulation, and (3) characterization of public attitudes and opinions about child health and health policy. Davis is the founding director of the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health (http://www.med.umich.edu/mott/npch). He also directs major research projects regarding national vaccine development and financing and leads several health policy research training initiatives at the graduate and professional levels at U-M. He has been recognized with research and teaching awards at U-M and is also the recipient of the national Nemours Child Health Services Research Award in 2007.

Carmen Green, MD

Professor, Anesthesiology
Professor, Obstetrics and Gynecology
Professor, Health Management and Policy
University of Michigan Medical School

Carmen R. Green received a B.S. in Biology from the University of Michigan-Flint and a M.D. from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine where she was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) National Honor Medical Society. After completing an internship in internal medicine, Green completed a residency in anesthesiology, subspecialty training in ambulatory and obstetrical anesthesiology, and a fellowship in pain medicine at the University of Michigan. She completed the Association of American Medical Colleges' (AAMC) Health Services Research Institute fellowship, the National Institute of Aging's Summer Research Institute fellowship, Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program, Mayday Pain & Society fellowship, and the Institute of Medicine (IOM)/Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy fellowship (where she was also a health policy fellow with the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and the Children and Families Subcommittee).

She is a tenured professor of anesthesiology, obstetrics and gynecology, and health management and policy as well as an attending physician in the Back and Pain Care Center, a principal investigator for the Michigan Pain Outcomes Study Team (M-POST), a faculty associate in the Program for Research on Black Americans within the Resource Center for Group Dynamics at the Institute for Social Research, and a faculty member of the Depression Center and Cancer Center. She is co-director for the Dissemination and Health Policy Core and Community Liaison Core and director of the Healthier Black Elders Center for the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research.

Green's health services research agenda focuses on pain management outcomes, physician decision-making, and access to care. She has spoken widely on health and pain care disparities due to age, race, gender, and class; physician variability in decision-making; and health policy.

Robert Goodman, DO, MHSA, FACEP

Regional Medical Director, Blue Care Network of Michigan

Robert Goodman, D.O., M.H.S.A., F.A.C.E.P., is a regional medical director with Blue Care Network of Michigan. He is a native of Michigan and a graduate of both the Michigan State University undergraduate program and the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine. Dr. Goodman completed a residency in Emergency Medicine, is board certified and later received a Masters in Health Services Administration from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He held both clinical and administrative positions in Metro Detroit area emergency departments prior to joining BCN in 1999, along with involvement with the Wayne County EMS system and EMS education.

His role at BCN includes activities in the areas of utilization management and analysis, medical informatics, physician profiling, medical policy, claims adjudication, research review and other duties. Dr. Goodman has also been involved in many Michigan Certificate of Need Commission committees and workgroups over the years as a representative of BCBSM/BCN and has been a member of a National Quality Forum steering committee on emergency care representing America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). He is currently the chair of the Greater Detroit Area Health Council Emergency Department Utilization Team and a member of the CHRT Research and Policy Committee. He has also published studies on emergency department utilization and specialist physician profiling.

Helen Levy, PhD

Research Associate Professor
University of Michigan

Helen Levy, Ph.D., is a research associate professor at the University of Michigan with appointments at the Institute for Social Research, the Ford School of Public Policy and the School of Public Health. She is a co-investigator on the Health and Retirement Study, a long-running longitudinal study of health and economic dynamics at older ages. Her research interests include the causes and consequences of lacking health insurance, evaluation of public health insurance programs, and the role of health literacy in explaining disparities in health outcomes.

Before coming to the University of Michigan she was an assistant professor at the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and served as a senior economist to the President's Council of Economic Advisers in 2010-11. She received a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University.

Robert M. Merion, MD, FACS

Professor, Surgery
University of Michigan Medical School

Robert M. Merion, M.D., F.A.C.S., is the president of Arbor Research Collaborative for Health and a professor of surgery in the Section of Transplantation at the University of Michigan. Merion is a past president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons. His scientific interests are focused on epidemiology and public policy issues in transplantation, particularly related to the allocation of scarce donor organs. He has been the principal investigator on 22 externally funded research grants. Merion served as the clinical transplant director of the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients from 2000 to 2010. He is currently the principal investigator of the data coordinating centers for the NIDDK-funded Adult-to-Adult Living Donor Liver Transplantation Cohort Study (A2ALL) and the NIAID-funded Clinical Outcomes of Live Organ Donors network.He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, chapters and books.

Sanjay Saint, MD, MPH

Professor, Internal Medicine
University of Michigan Medical School

Director, VA/University of Michigan Patient Safety Enhancement Program
Associate Chief of Medicine
Ann Arbor VA Medical Center

Sanjay Saint, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, director of the VA/University of Michigan Patient Safety Enhancement Program and the associate chief of medicine at the Ann Arbor VA Medical Center. His research focuses on enhancing patient safety by preventing healthcare-associated infection and translating research findings into practice. He has authored about 180 peer-reviewed papers with more than 60 appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, or the Annals of Internal Medicine. His research is currently funded through extramural grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Saint has authored or edited several books, including the Saint-Frances Guide to Inpatient Medicine (published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins) and Clinical Problem-Solving (published by McGraw-Hill). He has received several major teaching awards while at U-M, including the Kaiser Permanente Award for Excellence in Clinical Teaching. He is a special correspondent to the New England Journal of Medicine, an editorial board member of the Annals of Internal Medicine, and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI).

He received his M.D. from UCLA, completed a medical residency and chief residency at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), and obtained a Masters in Public Health (as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar) from the University of Washington in Seattle. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Florence during the 2007-08 academic year, where he studied diffusion of innovation and hand hygiene practices in Italian hospitals. He has been a visiting professor at more than 30 universities and hospitals in the United States, Europe, and Japan.

Vice President, Value Partnerships
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan

David A. Share, M.D., M.P.H., serves as vice president, value partnerships, at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. He served for 30 years as founding medical director of The Corner Health Center, a community-based health center in Ypsilanti, Mich., for teenagers and their children, where he still practices medicine.

Share earned his Master of Public Health, medical and bachelor’s degrees from the University of Michigan, where he is an adjunct clinical assistant professor in the departments of Family Medicine and Pediatrics.

Share serves on the Board of Directors of the Michigan State Medical Society (MSMS). He is the chair of the MSMS Committee on Michigan’s Public Health. He also chairs the MSMS Task Force on the Future of Medicine, as well as the Community Wellness working group of the Future of Medicine Task Force. He serves as an executive councilor of the Michigan Antibiotic Resistance Reduction Coalition, and a director of the Washtenaw Health Plan, a county health insurance program for indigent people with no other source of health insurance.

Share serves on the Commission for a High Performance Health System of the Commonwealth Fund. He also is a fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine.

Dean Smith, PhD

Senior Associate Dean for Administration
Professor, Health Management and Policy
University of Michigan School of Public Health

Dean Smith is a professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy and senior associate dean for administration at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He is committed to a line of teaching and research that helps to provide a better understanding of the financial aspects of working with and working in health care delivery and financing organizations. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics from U-M and his doctorate in economics from Texas A&M University.

In his administrative role, he is responsible for financial, personnel and employee benefits issues. He is chair of the MHealthy Advisory Committee, U-M’s umbrella organization for health and wellness programs, chair of U-M's Pharmacy Benefit Oversight Committee, a member of the Medical Benefits Advisory Committee and director of the U-M Center for Value-Based Insurance Design (V-BID). In service away from U-M, Smith is past chair of the board and current chair of the Audit Committee of the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) and a member of the board of the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME). He is also on the board of the Michigan Public Health Institute and the board of Visitors at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth.

Marita G. Titler, PhD, RN, FAAN

Associate Dean of Clinical Scholarship & Practice Development
Rhetaugh G. Dumas Endowed Chair
Professor and Chair, Division of Nursing Business & Health Systems
University of Michigan School of Nursing

Marita G. Titler is a professor, associate dean of clinical scholarship and practice development and Rhetaugh G. Dumas Endowed Chair at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. At the Institute of Medicine, she was a member of the Forum on the Science of Health Care Quality Improvement and Implementation, and the Committee on Standards for Developing Trustworthy Clinical Guidelines. Her funded program of research focuses on outcomes effectiveness and translation science. She has served on study sections for the National Institutes of Health and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She received the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research (FNINR) 2010 Presidents Award for her work in translation science.

Marcia Valenstein, MD, MS

Associate Professor, Psychiatry
University of Michigan

Research Scientist, Department of Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Service and the Serious Mental Illness Treatment Research and Evaluation Center
VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System

Marcia Valenstein has worked extensively in assessing the quality of mental health care for patients with depression and serious mental illness and has been instrumental in implementing several innovative programs to improve the care of patients in the health system and to connect individuals with need to appropriate treatment resources. She has been principal investigator on multiple federally and foundation funded grants and has more than 100 articles or book chapters published or in press. Her funded projects have focused on the quality of care for depression and schizophrenia, medication adherence, interventions to improve adherence, suicide among veterans, peer support for depression, and peer linkage to care for newly returning soldiers.