Using Research Thinking to Address Health Policy Problems: Nicole Lurie, M.D., M.S.P.H.

How can health services researchers advance health policy and broad-based clinical operations using the 'research thinking' approach they bring to their work? How can they move from research to 'getting things done?'

Healthcare and public health are coming together in increasingly complex ways, yet health services research provides a set of tools to solve problems at the interface, yet these are often not continued to belong to one or the other domain.

In this seminar presented on February 20, 2020, by the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation (IHPI), Dr. Nicole Lurie discussed what she has learned in her career path from clinical care to academic research to roles in the federal government. The talk took the form of a 'fireside chat' with Sue Anne Bell, Ph.D., M.S.N., M.Sc, FNP-BC, an assistant professor in the U-M School of Nursing and mentee of Lurie's.

Dr. Lurie served as Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration, and currently serves as Strategic Advisor to the CEO at the nongovernmental organization called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

Dr. Lurie is also a professor of Medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine and a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, as well as an honorary fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.

In her HHS role, Dr. Lurie led the response to numerous public health emergencies, ranging from infectious disease to natural and man-made disasters and was responsible for many innovations in emergency preparedness and response. She also chaired the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise, a government wide organization ultimately responsible for the development of medical countermeasures, including vaccines against pandemics and emerging threats.

Prior to federal service, she was the Paul O'Neill Professor of Policy Analysis at RAND, where she started and led the public health preparedness program and RAND's Center for Population Health and Health Disparities. She has also had leadership roles in academia, as Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Minnesota, as Medical Advisor to the Commissioner, Minnesota Department of Health, and as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health at the US Department of Health and Human Services.

The IHPI Research Seminar Series is a lecture-based program designed to share innovative health services research topics, studies, and programs, with clinicians, faculty, research staff, and students from a variety of disciplines.