Master of Science in International Health Policy and Management

Improving health care is crucial for development but health care policy makers and managers face complex challenges with severely limited resources. The Master of Science (MS) in International Health Policy and Management is designed to tackle solutions to these problems and teach skills necessary to design and implement effective programs. The MS is a joint undertaking of two major groups within The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University : the Schneider Institutes for Health Policy and the Programs in Sustainable International Development.

A comprehensive understanding
Integrating learning with action
Who should apply?
The MS community
The MS faculty
The MS program leaders
Curriculum
Policy and Management Tracks

A comprehensive understanding
The task of translating new policies in health care systems into successful programs often encounters barriers including weak management, or policy makers and managers who do not share a common understanding of desired health outcomes. The MS Program addresses the need to align policies, organizations and health outcomes.

In this rapidly globalizing arena, health care policy makers and managers also need a comprehensive knowledge of the principles underlying the economics and management of health systems, resource mobilization, and allocation -- including issues of equity, cost effectiveness and efficiency, building public-private partnerships, and regulation. The MS Program prepares students to address these challenges by bringing together experts in the fields of international development, health financing and health systems.

Integrating learning with action
Bringing together planners and implementers, the MS Program facilitates shared learning to translate research into policy and action. And because the MS Program trains students in both policy and management, we address the critical gap that often exists between planning and implementation of health programs. Students learn how to make the best use of policy analysis to determine which plans work and which are the most cost-effective. The MS Program provides the student not only with a conceptual framework, but the tools and techniques to engage in policy development and evaluation, and to manage implementation.

By bridging these gaps, recipients of this MS Degree are better equipped to meet such challenges as helping governments manage health care markets; dealing with the relationship between chronic illness, including HIV/AIDS, and macroeconomic growth; or managing the transition from diseases of poverty to those of higher income populations.

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Who should apply?
The MS is designed to prepare early- to midcareer professionals, who have at least two years of relevant experience working in low- and middle-income countries, or with the marginalized communities in high income countries, to play increasingly responsible roles in health policy planning and in the management of policy and program implementation in government health ministries and planning agencies, multilateral and bilateral development agencies, and in NGOs.

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The MS community
Students matriculating in the MS Program will join over a hundred other early- to midcareer professionals in the Sustainable International Development (SID) Programs cluster of degree offerings. SID students come from all over the world and form a close partnership each year working on problems of underdevelopment, marginalization, and project implementation.

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The MS faculty
The MS Program is a joint undertaking of two major groups of scientists and faculty of The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

The Schneider Institute for Health Policy (SIHP) is an internationally recognized health care policy and research institution. Since its establishment in 1978, the Schneider Institute has conducted research, policy analysis, and technical assistance on issues of organization, delivery, regulation, and financing of the U.S. and selected international health care systems. In line with its collaborative approach in addressing health care system problems, the Institute works with other academic and health service research organizations, as well as with service delivery systems that serve as laboratories for demonstrating and testing new financial and delivery strategies. SIHP is the largest research and training center at Brandeis.

The Programs in Sustainable International Development (SID) was founded in 1992. Its teaching and research programs have gained international recognition for their innovation in examining models of development for their achievements in reducing poverty and inequality, in raising quality of life, in enhancing the status of women, in advancing effective health care systems, and in conserving the biodiversity of fragile environments. SID seeks fresh thinking about complex relationships, bridging areas of concern reserved traditionally to scientists or social scientists, policy makers, human rights advocates, or development practitioners.

In addition, the Master of Business Administration (MBA) Program faculty group is participating in the MS curriculum and teaching. The MBA Program prepares managers for leadership positions in organizations pursuing social missions, particularly in the health and human services, in nonprofit, public, and for-profit sectors.

The senior MS faculty combines academic expertise with practical knowledge. They have held senior positions in the highest level of government, are engaged in policy discussions and dialogue with multilateral and non-governmental organizations, and are successfully designing and implementing major health system innovations in the United States and throughout the world including low and middle-income countries. Their areas of expertise include:

1. Health care financing and resource mobilization
2. Provider payment including rate setting for services
3. Designing provider networks both for primary and hospital based care
4. Health information systems
5. Understanding the diffusion and adaptation of technology (including pharmaceuticals)
6. Policy analysis and dialogue to support health systems change
   
7. Development policy, poverty alleviation strategies, sustainable change.
8. Program and project planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

See the full listing of Faculty at The Heller School.

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The MS Program Leaders

	Sarita Bhalotra (email: bhalotra@brandeis.edu), assistant professor, is co-chair for the Concentration in Health Policy and Health Services and teaches management and policy classes. Her research projects have included working with large multispecialty groups and managed care organizations on the financing and delivery of health care. Current work includes a utilization, cost, and outcomes evaluation of patients with chronic disease in different delivery systems, a multi-state evaluation of a prospective survey of behavioral health clients in managed care, a study of nonprofit hospitals undergoing for-profit conversion and its impact on communities, an evaluation of a behavioral health initiative in managed care organizations, and an evaluation of the impact on cardiovascular disease of a lifestyle modification program. Professor Bhalotra received her medical degree from Lady Hardinge Medical College, Delhi University, New Delhi, India, and is certified by the United States Educational Council for Foreign Medical Graduates. She was a Pew Health Policy Fellow and received her doctorate in social policy from The Heller School.
	Jon A. Chilingerian, Ph.D., (email: chilinge@brandeis.edu), Associate Professor of Management, is the Director of Management and Organizational Sciences Research. He is a co-director of the AHRQ Fellowship Program in Health Services Research and the M.D./M.B.A. Program with Tufts and Northeastern Universities. Professor Chilingerian's current work focuses on analyzing the productive efficiency of health care organizations and providers, and the study of executive leadership. He has been principal investigator for several grants from the Pew Foundation, and is conducting research on cardio surgeries in Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. He has published scholarly papers and review essays in a variety of professional journals. From 1978 to 1982, he was assistant commissioner, director of accounting at Boston City Hospital. Professor Chilingerian received his Ph.D. in management in 1987 from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology.
	Barry L. Friedman (email: bfriedman@brandeis.edu), professor and economist, has worked extensively in the areas of social security and income maintenance. Professor Friedman has evaluated service programs and has conducted many studies relating to welfare and work. His most recent work has been in the area of social security, particularly in China. He has been a consultant to the World Bank and various agencies of the Chinese government. Professor Friedman has studied pension programs as well as unemployment insurance and health insurance. He has conducted actuarial analyses of the Chinese pension system and has investigated the distributional consequences of pension reform. Professor Friedman also has studied management issues in social security programs. He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.).
	Jody Hoffer Gittell (email: jgittell@brandeis.edu), assistant professor and director of the M.B.A. program, explores how coordination contributes to quality and efficiency outcomes in service settings. She has developed a theory of relational coordination, demonstrating its performance effects and how organizations can foster it. Her findings have appeared in journals such as Management Science, Organization Science, Medical Care, International Journal of Human Resource Management, California Management Review, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Management Studies (forthcoming) and as chapters in Best Practices in Customer Service, Healthcare Management: Organization Design and Behavior, Business Performance Measurement, Positive Organizational Scholarship (forthcoming) and Consumer-Driven Healthcare (forthcoming). She has written numerous teaching cases on service delivery in airline and healthcare settings, and a book called The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance. Gittell is currently exploring the challenge of coordinating across organizational boundaries, in the form of virtual teams and organizational partnerships. She is leading a 3-year study called "Improving Post-Discharge Care for Surgical Patients: The Challenge of Cross-Organizational Coordination" in partnership with Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, funded by the Commonwealth Fund. Gittell is co-chair of the Human Resource Network of the Industrial Relations Research Association, and vice chair of the board of directors for Families First Health and Support Center. She received her Ph.D. in 1995 from MIT Sloan School of Management.
	Susan Holcombe, Ph.D., (email: shholc@brandeis.edu), Associate Director, Academic Affairs, SID, served as the director of Global Programs for Oxfam America. She has served as Senior Adviser for both the United Nations Population Fund in China and with the United Nations Development Fund for Women in New York. She has also worked with UNICEF field offices in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the South Pacific, Sudan and Zimbabwe.(Read quote)
	Thomas Mclaughlin (email: tmclaugh@brandeis.edu), adjunct lecturer, is a consultant with Grant Thornton LLP, assisting non-profit clients with strategy, operations, and financial projects. He is a contributing editor for the Nonprofit Times, for which he writes a monthly column. Professor McLaughlin is the author of five management books, including Nonprofit Strategic Positioning: Decide Where to Be, Plan What to Do, the first non-profit-oriented book to describe strategic positioning as an alternative to traditional strategic planning.
	A.K. Nandakumar, Ph.D., (email: aknkumar@brandeis.edu), Associate Director of IHPM, has worked extensively on issues of long-term care financing, aging and its impact on health systems in developing countries, National Health Accounts, and other health care financing issues in the US and developing country contexts. He has worked extensively with governments on health sector reform issues in countries including India, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, Kenya, Rwanda, Samoa, and Tonga. (Read quote)
	Donald S. Shepard (email: shepard@brandeis.edu), professor, is a health economist concerned with health problems of both the United States and developing countries. Professor Shepard's major concentrations are cost and cost-effectiveness analysis in health, and health financing. In domestic applications of cost-effectiveness analysis, he is principal investigator on an evaluation of the impact of managed care programs for substance abuse for Medicaid recipients in Massachusetts and Michigan and led a 7-year NIDA-funded study on cost-effectiveness of drug treatment. Professor Shepard also directed the cost and cost-effectiveness analyses in the Alcohol and Drug Services Study (ADSS, a national study of the country's substance treatment system), in a study of substance abuse treatment in Connecticut prisons, and in studies of AIDS treatment and aftercare as part of randomized trials supported by the National Institutes of Health. In international studies on health economics, Professor Shepard is currently advising the Ministries of Health in Jamaica, Zimbabwe, Samoa, and the Ivory Coast on financing and cost analysis, and is the principal author of Analysis of Hospital Costs: A Manual for Managers published by the World Health Organization. He holds adjunct or visiting faculty appointments at the Boston University School of Public Health and the Brown University Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies. Professor Shepard received his M.A. and Ph.D. in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
	Laurence R. Simon, Ph.D., (email: simon@brandeis.edu), Professor of International Development and Director of the Programs in International Development, is a specialist in development planning and management. He helped launch Oxfam America's work in Central America and the Caribbean and was Oxfam America's director of policy analysis. He was the founder and president of the American Jewish World Service and served in Asia for the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank. He has worked on disaster relief and rehabilitation in southern and eastern Africa, Latin America and Bosnia. (Read quote)
	Stanley S. Wallack, Ph.D., (email: wallack@brandeis.edu), a Professor, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Schneider Institute for Health Policy, worked in senior Federal policy positions in Washington D.C. for a decade before coming to Brandeis University. During the past twenty years, his extensive research and publications has focused on developing effective reimbursement systems and organizational arrangements for acute and chronic health care. He frequently testifies and advises the U.S. Congress, most recently in the areas of pharmaceutical costs and benefit design. In addition, when the public sector has been unable to address social problems, Dr. Wallack has helped to establish private companies that meet the public needs. (Read quote)

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Curriculum:
The program is an intensive academic year from late August to a May graduation and incorporates intensive workshops and short seminars during winter break.

If otherwise outstanding applicants lack basic quantitative competencies in economics and statistics, need to improve their writing or computer skills, they may be required (at additional cost) to attend the Summer Enrichment Program prior to the formal start of MS program in late August.
Additionally, an intensive English as a Second Language summer course is available at other universities in the Boston area.

As a MS student, you are required to take twenty credits each semester. You must also take workshops during the winter break that include short two to three day sessions to build personal competencies useful to management including self-analysis of management style, interpersonal communications, exercises in delegating tasks or in mediating conflict. Participatory skill-building workshops complement classroom learning about health management and human resource management. The IPHPM experience culminates in a Capstone Seminar in which students focus on a particular issue and apply the analytical and managerial skills that they are developing to a specific problem.

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Policy and Management Tracks
The program offers two tracks: policy and management. Certain required courses are common to both and students study together. Other courses are required or electives for one track.

One of the hallmarks of The Heller School and of the MS curriculum is the interdisciplinary and integrative nature of its education programs.

Required courses that are common to both tracks include:

• International Health System: Where are we and how did we get here?
• Managing Policy and Practice Change in Health Systems: The Implementation Challenges
• Health Financing for Developing Countries
• World Health
• Capstone Seminar

Additional required courses for the policy track include:

• Intermediate and Advanced Statistics
• Resource Allocation
• National Health Accounts
• Intermediate Economics

Additional required courses for the management track include:

• Leadership and Organizational Behavior
• Accounting and Financial Management
• Operations Management
• Marketing

Students are also allowed to take approved electives from within The Heller School (including the MA/SID, MBA, and Ph.D. programs), the Brandeis International Business School, The Brandeis School of Arts and Sciences, and the Boston-area Consortium of Universities.

Curriculum and course listings above are subject to change.

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