Health and Attainment - Organizers

Health and Attainment Over the Lifecourse: Reciprocal Influences from Before Birth to Old Age

Friday, May 16, 2008
8:00 A.M. ? 4:30 P.M.
University Club of Chicago
76 East Monroe Street | Chicago, IL 60603

Conference Organizers

Ariel Kalil is an associate professor in the Harris School and director of the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy. She is a developmental psychologist who studies how economic conditions affect child and family functioning. Her projects have examined how transitions from welfare to work affect mothers and children, barriers to the employment of welfare recipients, as well as family processes and child development in female-headed, teenage-parent, and cohabiting-couple households. With funding from a William T. Grant Faculty Scholars Award, she is currently conducting a multi-method study of the effects of parental job loss on child development. A second major project, funded by the Foundation for Child Development's Changing Faces of America's Children Young Scholars Program, focuses on how parental labor market experiences and welfare program participation affect children's development in immigrant families. Finally, she is studying how job insecurity and job displacement affect mental and physical health and stress among older workers.

Kalil received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Michigan in 1996. Before joining the Harris School faculty in 1999, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan's Poverty Research and Training Center (now the National Poverty Center). She is also affiliated with the University of Chicago's Population Research Center, the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, and the Sloan Center on Working Families. In 2003, she was awarded the Society for Research in Child Development's first Award for Early Research Contributions.
 

P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale is Professor of Human Development and Social Policy, School of Education and Social Policy and the founding director of Cells to Society (C2S): The Center on Social Disparities and Health at IPR. She is an expert on the interface between research and social policy for children and families, a former Congressional Science Fellow, and the first developmental psychologist to be tenured in a public policy school in the United States.

She specializes in multidisciplinary research on social issues and how they affect family functioning and the development of children, youth, and adults. Her studies address positive developmental outcomes in the context of economic hardship, self-regulation, parent-child relationships across multiple generations as well as changes in family structure and developmental trajectories over the lifespan. Policy topics include social disparities, poverty, welfare reform, marriage and cohabitation, adolescent parenthood, and maternal employment. Chase-Lansdale is an expert in large-scale data sets as well as intensive behavioral measurement. Her edited books include Human Development Across Lives and Generations: The Potential for Change (2004) with Kathleen Kiernan and Ruth J. Friedman and For Better and For Worse: Welfare Reform and the Well-Being of Children and Families (2001) with Greg Duncan.

Chase-Lansdale is a fellow in the American Psychological Association, chair of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Child Development, and former member of the Policy Council of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. She currently serves on the National Academies? Board on Children, Youth, and Families, the selection committee for the William T. Grant Foundation Scholars Award, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Network on the Family and the Economy. Chase-Lansdale is the recipient of the Society for Research on Adolescence Social Policy Award and the Martin E. and Gertrude G. Walder Award for Research Excellence at Northwestern.
 

David Meltzer is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Department of Economics, and Harris School of Public Policy Studies and Director of the Center for Health and the Social Sciences (CHeSS) at the University of Chicago. Meltzer received his M.D. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and completed his residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Meltzer is also co-director of the Program in Outcomes Research and the MD/PhD Program in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago and serves on the faculty of the Graduate Program in Health Administration and Policy, the Population Research Center and the Center on Aging. He is immediate Past President of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

Meltzer's research explores problems in health economics and public policy. A major area of his research examines the theoretical foundations of medical cost-effectiveness analysis, including issues such as accounting for future costs due to the extension of life and the empirical validity of quality of life assessment, which he has examined in the context of diabetes and prostate cancer. He currently directs the CDC-funded Chicago Center of Excellence in Health Promotion Economics. Another major area of study examines determinants of the cost and quality of hospital care. Dr. Meltzer is currently principal investigator for a randomized trial examining the use of doctors who specialize in inpatient care ("hospitalists") compared to traditional academic physicians in six academic medical centers. Other work examines the role of mortality decline in the economic growth and the demographic transition of developing countries; the effects of prospective payment systems on the cost and quality of care, and the effects of FDA regulation on innovation in the pharmaceutical industry.

Meltzer is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lee Lusted Prize of the Society for Medical Decision Making, the Health Care Research Award of the National Institute for Health Care Management, the John M. Olin Faculty Fellowship, the Robert Wood Johnson Generalist Physician Award, the Eugene Garfield Economic Impact Award from Research America, and the Leaders in General Medicine Award from the Midwest Society for General Internal Medicine. He is a faculty research fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research and has served on a panel that is examining the "Future of Medicare" for the National Academy of Social Insurance, on panels examining U.S. organ allocation policy and cord blood stem cell banking for the Institute of Medicine, and on a Technical Advisory Panel on the financial viability of Medicare for the Department of Health and Human Services.
 

Matthew W. Stagner is Executive Director of Chapin Hall and a Senior Lecturer at the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. Prior to joining Chapin Hall, Dr. Stagner directed the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. He also served as Director of the Division of Children and Youth Policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He has directed research for the National Research Council and the Center for the Study of Social Policy as well.

Dr. Stagner is an expert on youth risk behaviors, child welfare services, and program evaluation. He is conducting research on the effectiveness of programs for children aging out of foster care. Dr. Stagner holds a Ph.D. from the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago and a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University?s John F. Kennedy School of Government.