Michael Darby

/in , , /by

A recognized authority in macroeconomics and international finance, Michael Darby has achieved great success in both the academic and public sectors. From 1986 to 1992, Darby served in a number of senior positions in the Reagan and Bush administrations including Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, Member of the National Commission on Superconductivity, Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs, and Administrator of the Economics and Statistics Administration. During his appointment, he received the Treasury’s highest honor, the Alexander Hamilton Award.

Dr. Darby is the widely-cited author of eleven books and monographs and numerous other professional publications. His most recent research has examined the growth of the biotechnology and nanotechnologies industry in the United States and in California, all science and engineering fields and high-technology industries in the world, and the role that universities and their faculties play in encouraging local economic development. Concurrently he holds appointments as chairman of The Dumbarton Group, research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research, and adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute. He is also director of UCLA’s John M. Olin Center for Public Policy, a position he has held since 1993. Previous to his Anderson School appointment in 1987, Darby held faculty positions or fellowships with UCLA’s department of economics, Stanford University, and Ohio State University. From his schooling to 1982, he also was vice president and director of Paragon Industries, Inc., a Dallas manufacturer of high-temperature kilns, furnaces, and refractories.

A.E. (TED) Benjamin

/in , , , , /by

An aspect of health care reform that will grow in importance in coming years involves designing and financing effective service systems for people of all ages with chronic health conditions. Professor Benjamin’s recent research has focused on home health services, hospice care, personal assistance services and other long-term services. This research, supported by federal and state governments and private foundations, has examined the differential impact of public program interventions on the elderly, and younger adults with disabilities.

Professor Benjamin’s most recent work has addressed two related areas of services for people with chronic health conditions. The first has involved the impact of different ways of organizing supportive, home-based services on the well-being of people with chronic health conditions. His research has compared traditional agency-based services with newer models that shift primary authority for services decisions and resource allocation to the recipients of services. Surprising findings of the pros and cons of redefining the roles of professionals and consumers have been reported in several journals and numerous presentations. The second research area involves workforce issues, and specifically what our options are for expanding and improving the supply of entry-level health care workers. This is important because this is the segment of the workforce that provides services to people with chronic health conditions at home or in institutional settings. This research is being done in collaboration with labor economists in the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

Age, Consumer Direction, and Outcomes of Supportive Services at Home
Benjamin, A.E. and R.E. Matthias. “Age, Consumer Direction, and Outcomes of Supportive Services at Home.” The Gerontologist , 41-5 (October 2001), 632-42.

Consumer-Directed Services at Home: A New Model for Persons with Disabilities
Benjamin, A.E. “Consumer-Directed Services at Home: A New Model for Persons with Disabilities.” Health Affairs, 20-6 (November/December 2001), 80-95.

A Normative Analysis of Home Care Goals
Benjamin, A.E. “A Normative Analysis of Home Care Goals.” Journal of Aging and Health 11 (August 1999), 445-68.

Laura Alongi Brinderson

/in , , , /by

Laura Alongi is a licensed clinical social worker whose interests lie in mental health issues with children, adolescents, and their families. She is also interested in parenting education and training, and the early childhood bonding process.

As a practicum consultant with the California Social Work Education Center program, a statewide program that trains social workers to become professional public child welfare workers, she works with first- and second-year students, and is involved in recruiting promising child welfare candidates.

Alongi has worked as a social worker in community mental health clinics including South Bay Child Guidance, the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center, and Aviva Children and Family Services. She worked primarily with emotionally disturbed children and their families, both in individual/family and group modalities. She was also a supervisor for several years, and was involved in program development and administration when she served as a program director for the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center.

Currently, she has a small private practice, and provides supervision and consultation to new and unlicensed social workers.

LinkedIn profile

Neal Halfon

/in , , , , /by

Dr. Halfon received an MD from the University of California, Davis, and a MPH from the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his pediatric residency at UC San Diego and UC San Francisco. Dr. Halfon was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at both UC San Francisco and Stanford.

He has published the results of research on immunizations for inner-city children, health care needs to children in foster care, trends in chronic illnesses for children, delivery of health care services for children with asthma, and investigations of new models of health service delivery for high-risk children. Dr. Halfon recently co-authored and co-edited Child Rearing in America: Challenges Facing Parents with Young Children with Kathryn Taaffe McLearn and Mark A. Shuster. In this volume Dr. Halfon and a team of experts analyze findings from recent nationwide surveys, offering new insights into parenting beliefs and practices that can help to bring about more family-responsive and holistic child health and developmental services. Dr. Halfon also led the team that developed and implemented the 2000 National Survey of Early Childhood Health, and supervised the analysis of that survey, and the resulting special supplement to the journal Pediatrics which will be published in the fall of 2003.

Dr. Halfon’s primary research interests include the provision of developmental service to young children, access to care for low-income children, and delivery of health services to children with special health care needs — with a particular interest in abused and neglected children who are in the foster care system. His recent work attempts to define a developmentally-focused model of health production across the life course, and to understand the implications of such an approach for the delivery and financing of health care. He is currently co-chair of the Health Services Working Group for the planned National Children’s Study, an effort being led by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr Halfon was appointed to the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine in 2001. He has also served on numerous expert panels and advisory committees including the 1999 Institute of Medicine committee commissioned by Surgeon General Satcher to propose the leading health indicators to measure the countries progress on our National Healthy Peoples agenda. He currently serves on a congressionally mandated Committee of the Institute of Medicine to evaluate how children’s health should be measured in the US.

Neal Halfon, MD, MPH is the Director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities, and also directs the Child and Family Health Program in the UCLA School of Public Health, and the federally funded Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s National Center for Infancy and Early Childhood Health Policy Research. Dr. Halfon is a Professor of Pediatrics in the UCLA School of Medicine and Professor of Community Health Sciences in the UCLA School of Public Health, and is Professor of Policy Studies in the School of Public Policy and Social Research and is a also consultant in the Health Program at RAND.

JoAnn Damron-Rodriguez

/in , , , /by

Dr. Damron-Rodriguez, Retired Adjunct Professor, was awarded a UCLA 2006 Distinguished Teaching Award. This honor, given to selected faculty since 1963, recognizes exemplary teaching and education innovation. She also received the Robert Stevenson Faculty in Residence Award in 1998 and again in 2000. In 2000 she spearheaded the creation of an interdisciplinary GE Honors Cluster class titled “Frontiers in Human Aging: Biomedical, Social, and Policy Perspectives” to explore the reciprocity of biological, psychological, and social dimensions of human aging (http://www.college.ucla.edu/ge/clusters/ge80.html).

She is Co-PI on a statewide Archstone Foundation grant to research geriatric social work labor force demand in California. She is PI of evaluation of the Hartford Foundation funded Social Work Leadership Institute Practicum Partnership Program involving 65 schools of social work. As the Co-Principle Investigator on the Hartford/Archstone Geriatric Social Work Education Consortium (GSWEC), she played a pivotal role in the creation of a new field-training model that advances preparation of competent geriatric social workers.

Dr. Damron-Rodriguez is a federally appointed member of the Veterans Health Administration Gerontology and Geriatrics Advisory Committee, which reports to congress. For 10 years Dr. Damron-Rodriguez was the Associate Director of the VA Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center (GRECC) of Greater Los Angeles and Co-Principle Investigator of a Health Services Research Development project to examine access to healthcare for minority veterans.

Since 1992 JoAnn has been a core faculty for the Bureau of Health Professions funded California Geriatric Education Center. She is on the Council of Social Work Education (CSWE) National GeroEd Center Board. She is a Past President of the Board of the California Council on Gerontology and Geriatrics (CCGG). She has been instrumental in the organization of state legislative hearings in partnership with the Senate Subcommittee on Aging and Long-Term Care and the Senate Committee on Education. Dr. Damron-Rodriguez has testified at both state and federal levels on policy issues, workforce competency standards, and demographic trends related to California’s aging population. She was appointed by Governor Gray Davis to serve on a Blue Ribbon panel to investigate the state nursing homes. She is currently an advisor to the World Health Organization, Kobe Center for Health Development regarding community-based care in developed and developing countries.

Additionally, Dr. Damron-Rodriguez, L.C.S.W., has twenty years of practice experience in health, mental health, and hospice care. She serves on multiple editorial boards and scientific review committees. Dr. Damron-Rodriguez has published extensively on geriatric education, diversity in aging, and community based elder care.