July 7th, 2011

The Benefits of Health Insurance for the Poor

When poor people are given medical insurance, they not only find regular doctors and see doctors more often but they also feel better, are less depressed and are better able to maintain financial stability, according to a new, large-scale study that provides the first rigorously controlled assessment of the impact of Medicaid. Those who do not have health insurance tend to be different in many ways from people who have it, says Alan Garber, MD head of Stanford Health Policy.

• » New York Times: First Study of its Kind Shows Benefit of Providing Medical Insurance to Poor

May 20th, 2011

Population Reference Bureau interviews Alan Garber

In an interview with the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), Alan Garber discusses cost-effectiveness research and its importance to health care reform. Read more »

April 15th, 2011

Alan Garber named Provost of Harvard

Alan Garber, the Henry J. Kaiser, Jr. Professor and Professor of Medicine and Economics, and Director of Stanford Health Policy (Center for Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research), has been named Provost of Harvard University, effective fall 2011. Making the announcement Harvard President Drew Faust said, “Alan is a distinguished academic leader who brings to Harvard an extraordinary breadth of experience in research across disciplines." FSI Director Coit D. Blacker, the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies said, "We congratulate Alan on his appointment as Provost of Harvard. We will miss his probing intellect, his contributions to scholarship and public policy, and his keen appreciation of the challenges facing research universities." In a message to colleagues Alan Garber said, "My time on the faculty at Stanford has been wonderful in every important way. The past 13 years, when CHP and PCOR were created and grew, have been the high point of my Stanford career."

• » Stanford Report: Harvard names Stanford Medical School Professor Alan M. Garber as its next provost
• » Harvard Gazette: Alan Garber named provost

February 15th, 2011

The 112th Congress: What's in Store for Cancer Care in 2011?

The 111th Congress is gone but not forgotten, having passed into law the landmark Affordable Care Act of 2010. Although this legislation has several interesting appropriations for cancer research, a core principle of the bill is finding ways to reduce health-care spending, which gives the oncology community an uneasy sense of déjà vu: The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 hammered oncology with deep cuts in reimbursement for Part B drugs, leaving many community infusion centers underwater. Oncology practices, especially smaller one- to three-person groups, have to wonder how much more change they can take. Read more »

April 21st, 2010

IOM recommendations for sodium intake cites SHP study

The Institute of Medicine issued recommendations for decreasing sodium intake in the United States, and drew upon a recent study by Stanford Health Policy trainee Crystal Smith-Spangler, director Alan Garber and core faculty member Douglas Owens. The IOM report referenced their Annals of Internal Medicine paper, which found that a voluntary effort by the U.S. food service industry to reduce salt in processed foods could prevent strokes and heart attacks in nearly a million Americans and saving $32.1 billion in medical costs.

• » Population Strategies to Decrease Sodium Intake and the Burden of Cardiovascular Disease: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis