New Health Partnerships

Laurel Simmons, MS

Editor in Chief

Marie Abraham, MA

Associate Editor

Patients and Families

Mark I. Cheren, EdD

Associate Editor

Health Care Providers

David Spero, RN

Senior Writer

 Editorial Board

Laurel Simmons, MS, Co-Chair

 Doriane C. Miller, MD, Co-Chair

Mark Cheren, EdD

Marie Abraham, MA

David Spero, RN

Nada Ghandour, MD

Cindy Betti-Sullivan

Judith Schaefer, MPH

Karen Tate

Angela Hovis, MA

Web Associates

Meredith Kimball

Matthew Morse

Contributors

Thomas Bodenheimer, MD

Alan Glaseroff MD

Michael G. Goldstein, MD

Penny Lane, MPH

John H. Wasson, MD

 Website Development

Lauren Patrick, NetHealth Inc.

Bill Green, Radium Interactive, LLC

 Site Contributors

David Spero, RN is lead writer of the New Health Partnerships site. He is a nurse / educator living with multiple sclerosis and knows chronic illness from inside and out. Since the publication of his first book, The Art of Getting Well: Maximizing Health When You Have a Chronic Illness, (Hunter House 2002), David has led self-management and wellness groups for patients and has trained health care providers in the US and Europe.

A community organizer and health care activist, he understands the social causes of illness, the economic, political and environmental realities that frame our lives and our health. David’s new book, Diabetes: Sugar-Coated Crisis – Who gets it, who profits, and how to stop it, (New Society 2006) reveals the social causes of illness and successful, social approaches to treating and preventing it. He reports on the cutting-edge, patient-centered medical practices described in New Health Partnerships and other effective programs from around the world. 

David gives workshops and talks for health care providers and systems on providing effective self-management support. His web site is www.davidsperorn.com. He blogs at www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/blogs/David_Spero 

Laurel Simmons, SM, is a Project Director and Grants Director at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). Prior to IHI, she worked at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory where she developed an interest in patient use of computers to support illness. Laurel was a pioneer in patient-based Internet resources, having founded one the first Internet patient-to-patient mailing lists. She has served as the chairman of the board of the Association of Online Cancer Resources (ACOR), a non-profit organization that delivers over one million e-mail messages each week to cancer patients. At IHI, Laurel is Deputy Director of the Collaborative Self-Management initiative, and co-director of the Patient Centered Care Innovation Initiative.

Marie Abraham, MA is a policy and program specialist for the Institute for Family-Centered Care. Since joining the Institute in 1996, her work has included providing consultation to hospitals and health care systems that are working toward patient- and family-centered change, developing resource materials and the Institute’s web site, and serving as a faculty member for Institute seminars. Since 1998, Marie has served as a consultant for quality improvement projects for the Vermont Oxford Network, an international collaborative committed to improving the safety and quality of neonatal intensive care. Marie also consults on national quality improvement initiatives focusing on maternity and normal newborn care and primary care for children and adults with long-term conditions, including the Quality Allies project. Her publications focus on patient- and family-centered maternity and newborn intensive care. Prior to 1996, Marie worked for ten years as a developmental specialist for infants, young children and their families and as a trainer of trainers in the field of early childhood special education.

Cindy Betti-Sullivan is a Project Manager at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). At IHI, Cindy has managed IHI’s Office Practice initiatives, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded initiative, Quality Allies, and the Redesigning the Clinical Office Practice Learning Community. In addition, she has worked with the Workforce Development Community and on internal improvement projects to redesign IMPACT, IHI’s membership network. Prior to her work at IHI, Cindy worked in television production at MTV Networks. Cindy Betti-Sullivan received a BA in Psychology from Pace University in New York City.

Mark Cheren, EdD, Improvement Learning Environments, is Executive Director for the Healthcare Improvement Skills Center (HISC) Collaborative, a program responsible for the development and elaboration of a substantial collection of web-based QI learning resources. An  IHI faculty member, he has helped develop a comprehensive active learing environment for the NE Ohio Primary Practice Physicians Program in Chronic Pain. He constributes professional development and web consultation to IHI's New Health Partnerships initiative. 

Mark has held leadership positions and consulted in a variety of settings, from non-traditional higher education and non-profit management to continuing medical education. Leadership roles have included Administrative Coordinator (ceo) for Campus-Free College, Assistant Director at the National Office of Personnel Training and Devellopment, American Red Cross, and Director, Program in Continuing Medical Education, at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He has fostered the development of learning communities throughout his career and has an abiding interest in efforts that support the transition to greater self-management in learning and professional development. Publication and research round out his practice. For more than ten years, Mark and his wife Kathy (psychiatrist Dr. Kathleen Clegg) have been  involved in training programs offered in the US and abroad by the Case/Rainbow Center for Global Childhealth where healthcare professionals learn to better address the special needs of children in disasters.

Michael G. Goldstein, M.D. is Associate Director for Clinical Education and Research at the Institute for Healthcare Communication (IHC), a non-profit foundation based in New Haven, CT. The mission of the IHC is to improve the quality of health care through enhanced clinician-patient communication. At the IHC, Michael’s responsibilities have included developing and disseminating educational programs to assist clinicians to deliver patient-centered care, promote patient health behavior change and support self-management of chronic conditions.

Michael is also an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown Medical School and an Investigator at the Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine at The Miriam Hospital in Providence, RI. Michael is a Past President of the Society of Behavioral Medicine and has been elected a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the Society of Behavioral Medicine and the American Academy on Communication in Health Care. Michael has served as faculty for several quality improvement collaboratives and most recently served as Faculty Chair for the Quality Allies Learning Community, a project managed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the California Health Care Foundation. 

Joanna Kaufman, RN, MS is an Information Specialist at the Institute for Family-Centered Care. As a member of the Institute's team, she collaborates on a variety of projects that involve research, writing, editing, and analysis. Joanna is a registered nurse with more than 20 years of experience in patient- and family-centered care and a myriad of pediatric clinical experience, gained in the trenches of Strong Memorial Hospital, Charity Hospital of New Orleans, and Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Ms. Kaufman was the former Executive Director of a SPRANS (Special Project of Regional and National Significance) grant and the Vice President of Quality Management for a managed care organization exclusively serving children with special health care needs. Joanna has served as a grant reviewer for numerous federal agencies, was a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of two professional journals, and a Board Member for the Case Management Society of America, and the National Association for Home Care. 

Matt Morse is a Project Assistant at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and a recent graduate of Northeastern University in Boston, MA. Matt majored in Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management and came to IHI as a co-op student in January of 2007 working with the Strategic Partners group and later with New Health Partnerships. Matt regularly contributes to the posting and maintenance of new content on www.newhealthpartnerships.org. 

Judith Schaefer, MPH is a senior research associate with MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation, the National Program Office for Improving Chronic Illness Care, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) funded program to promote health system change for people with chronic illness located at the Center for Health Studies, Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, Washington. She is also Director of the Self-Management Support Learning Community, Quality Allies: Improving Care by Engaging Patients, a RWJF funded program at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Judith co-chaired the Self-Management Workgroup for the Bureau of Primary Health Care’s Health Disparities Collaboratives and speaks frequently on helping people and systems change.

Judith received her MPH from the University of Washington. She has served as a faculty member with Bayer Institute for Healthcare Communication, and is a master trainer for Stanford Patient Education Research Center’s Chronic Disease Self-Management Program. Her publications include studies on measurement of patient experience of care, case management, collaborative management of chronic illness, chronic disease management programs, health services evaluation, evidence for self-management support in chronic conditions. 

Karen Tate is the mother of an 18-year-old daughter with mental retardation and an acquired brain injury. Karen is a Family Consultant for The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), offering family-to-family support by means of programmatic initiatives and individual work with families and staff to improve communication and care. She also serves as Director of Family Collaboration for CHOP’s Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) Program. She is a member of the LEND Community Collaborative on Developmental Disabilities, focusing on youth to adulthood transition of services, and serves on the Community Pediatrics and Advocacy Program Advisory Board. Karen serves as faculty for the Quality Allies: Improving Care by Engaging Patients program.