Publications

2013
Quelch, J.A., Knoop, C.-I. & Rodriguez, M., 2013. The Slingshot: Improving Water Access, Harvard Business Publishing. Available from Harvard Business PublishingAbstract
In 2012, over 750 million people around the globe lacked access to safe drinking water. Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, sought to bring fresh water to poor and rural areas with the Slingshot, a water purification device. Kamen's challenge was to identify ways to distribute the Slingshot to areas where it was most needed. A partnership with the Coca-Cola Company helped Kamen to pilot distribution of the Slingshot in low-access regions.
Quelch, J.A. & Rodriguez, M., 2013. E-Cigarettes: Marketing Versus Public Health, Harvard Business Publishing. Available from Harvard Business PublishingAbstract

Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) were heralded by some as a healthcare game changer, enabling smokers to switch to a new product which carried lower risk of cancer. However, there were concerns about the public health risk of e-cigarettes, particularly the chance that teens would easily develop nicotine addictions from smoking the fruit-flavored products. Manufacturers argued that current smokers, not teens were the target market, but laws regulating e-cigarettes were far less stringent than those governing tobacco products.

Quelch, J.A., et al., 2013. Demarketing Soda in New York City, Harvard Business Publishing. Available from Harvard Business PublishingAbstract

In 2013, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried and failed to institute a ban on serving sizes of large sugary beverages. Obesity posed a large public health risk to the city. Mayor Bloomberg's proposed ban was one of many attempts to combat the rising threat of obesity. The case discusses the efficacy of the proposed ban on large soda serving sizes in the context of the other anti-obesity initiatives crafted by Bloomberg's administration.

Chai, J., Gordon, R. & Johnson, P., 2013. Steubenville, Ohio: A Community's Reckoning of Responsibility, Harvard University: Global Health Education and Learning Incubator. Access onlineAbstract
This case explores the role of social media in bringing a sexual assault incident to national attention and to trial. Two popular high school athletes sexually assaulted a teenage girl at a party. Despite evidence of their guilt based on their own boasts and eye witnesses, the community refused to hold the boys accountable for their actions because of their status as star athletes on the local football team. "Steubenville, Ohio: A Community’s Reckoning of Responsibility" is part of a case series on violence against women that illustrates the critical role of leadership through an examination of how social factors influence women’s health. Students analyze the situations described by considering the circumstances that placed each protagonist in vulnerable positions. Participants examined the commonalities and differences of these situations in an effort to understand the circumstances that affect women’s well-being. Additionally, using the cases as a framework, students analyzed the connections between collective outrage, reactive action, and leadership. 
Chai, J., Gordon, R. & Johnson, P., 2013. India's Daughter: The Rape that Galvanized a Nation, Harvard University: Global Health Education and Learning Incubator. Access onlineAbstract
This case explores the national, global, and social media response to a woman’s brutal rape in India in late 2012. The young woman was raped by strangers while taking a private bus after attending an event with a male friend, and subsequently died from her injuries. India’s Daughter: The Rape that Galvanized a Nation is a part of a case series on violence against women that illustrate the critical role for leadership through an examination of how factors within a society influence women’s health, in particular gender based violence. Students analyze the situations described by considering the circumstances that placed each protagonist in vulnerable positions. Participants examined the commonalities and differences of these situations in an effort to understand the circumstances that affect women’s well-being. Additionally, using the cases as a framework, students analyze the connections between collective outrage, reactive action, and leadership.
Chai, J., Gordon, R. & Johnson, P., 2013. Malala Yousafzai: A Young Female Activist, Harvard University: Global Health Education and Learning Incubator. Access onlineAbstract
This case traces the story of Malala Yousafzai who has advocated passionately for girls’ right to education. In October 2012, a militant group with ties to the Taliban shot 14-year-old Yousafzai in the head as she was riding the school bus home after a day of classes. Yousafzai recovered and became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. This case explores the social factors that made such an attack possible and why there continue to be such barriers to educational opportunities for girls. "Malala Yousafzai: A Young Female Activist" is a part of a case series on violence against women that illustrate the critical role for leadership through an examination of how factors within a society influence women’s health. Students analyze the situations described by considering the circumstances that placed each protagonist in vulnerable positions. Participants examined the commonalities and differences of these situations in an effort to understand the circumstances that affect women’s well-being. Additionally, using the cases as a framework, students analyzed the connections between collective outrage, reactive action, and leadership. 
Johnson, P. & Gordon, R., 2013. Hauwa Ibrahim: What Route to Change?, Harvard University: Global Health Education and Learning Incubator. Access onlineAbstract
This case explores Nigerian attorney Hauwa Ibrahim’s defense of a woman charged with adultery by Islamic Shariah law. One of Nigeria’s first female lawyers, Ibrahim develops a strategy to defend a young married woman, Amina Lawal, against adultery charges that could potentially, if the court judged against her, result in her death. While many Western non-governmental organizations and advocacy groups viewed Lawal’s case as an instance of human rights abuse and called for an abolition of the Shariah-imposed punishment, Ibrahim instead chose to see an opportunity for change within a system that many – especially cultural outsiders – viewed as oppressive. Ibrahim challenged the dominant paradigm by working within it to create change that would eventually reverberate beyond one woman’s case. Willing to start with a framework that saw long-term opportunity and possibility, Ibrahim developed a very measured change approach and theory framed in seven specific principles. Additionally, Ibrahim’s example of challenging her own internal paradigms while also insisting that others do the same invites students to examine their own internal systems and paradigms.
Kane, N.M. & Madden, S.L., 2013. Implementing a Patient-Centered Medical Home on Mount Desert Island, Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business PublishingAbstract
This case presents organizational challenges facing a physician champion of the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH). Dr. Julian Kuffler, working with his employer, the Mount Desert Island Hospital System (MDI), hoped to persuade the primary care physicians in the system to embrace the PCMH care model. Physician resistance was strongly opposed to some of the key principles of PCMH, such as managing the health of a defined population, standardizing chronic care management protocols, delegating patient care tasks to non-physician members of a care team, and to having strong physician leadership at the system level. At the same time, MDI was a small rural “critical access hospital” with declining admissions, predominantly outpatient-based revenues, and deteriorating finances. MDI leadership viewed high quality primary care to be essential for MDI to be able to attract the best health system partner with which it could affiliate to become part of a larger, more financially viable organization. MDI leadership also hoped to find a partner that could also support its participation in new population health arrangements such as accountable care organizations.
Siegrist, R., 2013. Children's Hospital in Transition, Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business PublishingAbstract
John Leader, president of Simsbury Children’s Hospital, was reviewing the recommendations put together by his senior management team to resolve the growing problems his hospital was facing. The recommendations, totaling some $10 million, could put the hospital back on a sound financial footing. But John was unsure which of the recommendations made sense and should be implemented. He was particularly interested in understanding the financial, operational and political impact of each one. He was due to meet with the senior management team that afternoon to develop an action plan.
Austin, S.B. & Sonneville, K.R., 2013. Closing the "know-do" gap: training public health professionals in eating disorders prevention via case-method teaching. International Journal of Eating Disorders , 46 (5) , pp. 533-537. Read onlineAbstract
Expansion of our societies' capacity to prevent eating disorders will require strategic integration of the topic into the curricula of professional training programs. An ideal way to integrate new content into educational programs is through the case-method approach, a teaching method that is more effective than traditional teaching techniques. The Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders has begun developing cases designed to be used in classroom settings to engage students in topical, high-impact issues in public health approaches to eating disorders prevention and screening. Dissemination of these cases will provide an opportunity for students in public health training programs to learn material in a meaningful context by actively applying skills as they are learning them, helping to bridge the "know-do" gap. The new curriculum is an important step toward realizing the goal that public health practitioners be fully equipped to address the challenge of eating disorders prevention.
"Expansion of our societies' capacity to prevent eating disorders will require strategic integration of the topic into the curricula of professional training programs. An ideal way to integrate new content into educational programs is through the case-method approach, a teaching method that is more effective than traditional teaching techniques." Access full article with HarvardKey
Weimer, M., 2013. Facilitating Effective Classroom Discussion, the Devil is in the Details. The Teaching Professor. Read online
"Leading discussions effectively is not an easy task for any of us. Even those who make it look easy have actually worked very hard to hone this important skill." Subscription required to view full article.
2012
Siegrist, R. & Kalenderian, E., 2012. Casey Dental Associates, Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business PublishingAbstract
Dr. Casey had just come out of a long meeting with his business manager, Linda Baker, and he was quite concerned. She shared with him that his practice was losing $10,000 a month on monthly revenues of approximately $90,000. Just six months ago he had opened a new office and expected his profit to be growing rather than shrinking. Did he make the wrong decision? He wondered what he should be doing to at least get back to a breakeven level for his practice as a whole.
2011
Alidina, S., Beit, L. & Brown, M., 2011. Implementing an Electronic Health Record at the Central City Medical Group, Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business PublishingAbstract
At the June 2007, Central City Medical Group (CCMG) board meeting, Deb Moore, Executive Director, reported that there were mounting tensions caused by the implementation of an electronic health record (EHR). Physician morale and productivity were spiraling downward. The present challenge was the growing gap between the patient workload and physician capacity, as physicians remained well below historic productivity levels while learning to use the new EHR. The medical director had resigned her post and other senior physicians were threatening to retire. Ms. Moore had a pressing question for the board: should CCMG stop accepting new patients until they returned to full productivity?
Wang, M. & Kane, N.M., 2011. The Green and Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI), Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business PublishingAbstract
Ruth Ann Norton, executive director of the National Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning (CECLP), founded the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI) in order to leverage newly available federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) for weatherizing low-income housing. Unfortunately, by June 2011, the ARRA funding was winding down, and Norton was looking for other, sustainable sources of financing to keep the GHHI program alive.
Siegrist, R., 2011. Hospital in Transition, Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business PublishingAbstract
Jane Leader, president of Simsbury General Hospital, was reviewing the recommendations put together by her senior management team to resolve the growing problems her hospital was facing. The recommendations, totaling some $10 million, could put the hospital back on a sound financial footing. But Jane was unsure which of the recommendations made sense and should be implemented. She was particularly interested in understanding the financial, operational and political impact of each one.  She was due to meet with the senior management team that afternoon to develop an action plan.
Siegrist, R., 2011. Sweetbriar Hospital (Parts A, B, & C), Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business PublishingAbstract
Lucy Normen, Chief Operating Officer of Sweetbriar Hospital, had just gotten off the phone with her Emergency Department Director, Dr. Max Warner. He was very upset with the present situation in the ED: people currently boarding in the ED hallways because there were no open inpatient beds; some patients waiting over 24 hours to be admitted; stressed out medical staff.” Dr. Warner worried about possible mistakes—and likely drops in patient satisfaction scores. Lucy was puzzled. They had just spent millions of dollars on expanding the hospital’s emergency department, yet in the three months since it re-opened things had gotten worse rather than better. She had a strong feeling that her problems were all related to inefficient patient flow throughout the hospital, but didn’t quite know how to address them. 
Sockalingam, N., 2011. Designing Problems for Problem-based Learning. Faculty Focus. Read online
"As the name implies, problems are absolutely essential for problem-based learning... if there are no problems, there will be no problem-based learning."
2010
Singer, S.J., 2010. International Patient Safety Collaborative, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.Abstract
Preparing for his hospital's monthly board meeting, the CEO of Poudre Valley Health System in Fort Collins, CO, was wrestling with whether or not to recommend that his hospital continue to participate in the International Patient Safety Collaborative (IPSC) which he had helped to found a couple of years earlier with several American and Israeli health care institutions. Using an approach developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the IPSC hospitals had had some success in sharing best practices for reducing hospital acquired infections (HAIs) and adverse drug effects (ADEs). The CEO valued the relationships he had built with his other collaborators, and the potential for quality improvement as well as building bridges in the Middle East, but wondered if the outcomes were worth the costs and difficulties associated with the collaborative. 
Case and teaching note available upon request from author.
Weed, L., Lipsitch, M. & Kane, N.M., 2010. Protecting the Population from the 2009 Pandemic H1N1 Virus, Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Download free of chargeAbstract
Dale Morse, MD, MS, could feel the tension rising in the room. He was chair of a special meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) called for July, 2009, that would make recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on whether to prioritize vaccine distribution to protect the population against a possible H1N1 influenza pandemic in the fall.  Dr. Morse was particularly concerned that if ACIP did not set priorities now, he and other state and local public health officials could be faced with a vaccine shortage amid high demand—a situation he described as a potential public health disaster.
2009
Dockery, D., 2009. Can Manufacturing Popcorn Make You Sick?, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

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