John Brooks

John Brooks, PhD, is a health economist with a focus on estimating treatment comparative effectiveness using practice based treatment variation. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan and was a Service Fellow at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and a Professor at the University of Iowa prior to coming to the University of South Carolina. Dr. Brooks is the Director of Center for Effectiveness Research in Orthopaedics (CERO) which is a collaborative effort between the University of South Carolina and the Greenville Hospital System to promote comparative effectiveness research (CER) in orthopedic care.  His research has focused on tackling the theoretical and empirical issues surrounding CER, and the CERO offers an extraordinary opportunity to further develop these methods in a clinical practice context with little controlled trial evidence. It is clear that proper treatment inferences from CER require a full understanding the factors underlying treatment decisions. The CERO will meld theoretical models of treatment choice with advanced methods to better understand the factors underlying treatment choices and the outcome implications associated with these choices.

Cole Champman

Cole Chapman, PhD, is a health economist with a focus on econometrics and methods for making inferences using observational databases. Dr. Chapman’s recent research focuses on assumptions underlying researchers’ ability to estimate patient-centered treatment effect (TE) concepts with the purpose of clarifying the conditions necessary for making inferences on TE heterogeneity and alternative TE parameters using instrumental variables (IV) methods. Dr. Chapman is interested in studying and explaining, in simple terms, the theoretical limitations of statistical tools and further awareness of these limitations so that evidence appropriately informs practice. Dr. Chapman earned his BS in Economics and PhD in Pharmaceutical Socio-Economics from The University of Iowa. Dr. Chapman is currently involved with research on patient preferences and variation in interventions for orthopedic conditions.

Brian Chen

Brian Chen, JD, PhD is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Services Policy and Management at the Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina. Dr. Chen’s research focuses on health policy and the impact of incentives in health care organizations on provider and patient behavior. Dr. Chen comes to the Arnold School of Public Health not only with a multidisciplinary law and economics background, but also with an international perspective. He has a particularly intimate knowledge of the Taiwanese health care system from his experience as an assistant to the hospital administrator at a medical college in Taiwan. Since joining the faculty at the Arnold School of Public Health, Dr. Chen has conducted empirical research related to providing care to diabetic patients in China, effects of legal and financial incentives such as malpractice liability, FDA policy on drug safety, and payment reform. His work also focuses on comparative health systems and health service delivery globally, a theme that encompasses the historical evolution of health policies; organizational innovation, contracting, and soft budget constraints; and chronic disease management and service coordination for aging populations. Dr. Brian Chen completed his Ph.D. in Business Administration at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. He received a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School in 1997, and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1992. Dr. Chen is also the Associate Director of the Taiwan Doctoral Program housed in the Department of Health Services Policy and Management.

Elizabeth Crouch

Elizabeth Crouch, PhD received her Ph.D. in Policy Studies (December 2012) and M.S. in Applied Economics and Statistics (August 2010) from Clemson University. Dr. Crouch was appointed as a research assistant professor in the department of Health Services Policy and Management in June 2015. Dr. Crouch’s scholarly interests have focused on the intersection of public health and incentive structures. Dr. Crouch was recently a co-investigator on a six month randomized control trial at Anmed Health Medical Center, analyzing the effects of social media and weight loss advice on obesity in adults.  Dr. Crouch has also directly examined interventions aimed to improve maternal and child health. One of Dr. Crouch’s recent publications determined the likelihood of immunization uptake among pre-school age children in the United States. This was undertaken to better understand how incentives might further increase immunization rates among minority populations.  Additionally, Dr. Crouch’s research on the state Medicaid population provided estimates of the cost-savings to healthcare payers of improved infant outcomes from maternal health interventions.

Melanie Cozad

Melanie Cozad, PhD is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Services Policy and Management and the Center for Effectiveness Research in Orthopedics at the Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina. Dr. Cozad’s research primarily focuses on quantifying how changes within the health care industry affect hospitals, hospices, and home health agencies. She comes to the Arnold School of Public Health with an applied microeconomic background in health care and the environment after having spent three years as an assistant professor at Furman University. Dr. Cozad also served five years in the United States Marine Corps. Dr. Cozad has conducted empirical research related to the implications of the Affordable Care Act on hospital utilization, capacity, the workforce, and its profitability as well as how effective hospices and home health care agencies are in delivering palliative care to children. With other colleagues at the Arnold School of Public Health, she is also working on a project that develops a valid and efficient approach to measure the preferences of individual patients over patient reported outcomes that effectively integrates these measures into the care process. Dr. Cozad completed her Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) in 2012. She also earned an M.A. in Economics from UTK in 2010, an MBA from Cameron University in 2007, and a B.S. in Economics from the United States Naval Academy in 2002.

Sarah Bauer Floyd

Sarah Bauer Floyd, PhD, MPH is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Services Policy and Management and the Center for Effectiveness Research in Orthopaedics at the Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina. Dr. Floyd’s research expertise is in orthopaedic treatment variation, treatment effectiveness, healthcare quality, and physician performance measure development. She has expertise working with large observational healthcare databases including Medicare claims and physical therapy and surgical outcome databases. Her current research is focused on exploring treatment pathways and treatment effectiveness for patients with knee and shoulder osteoarthritis and developing physician performance measures for sports medicine procedures and physical therapy episodes of care. Dr. Floyd joined the Center for Effectiveness Research in Orthopaedics after graduating with her doctorate in Health Services Research from the University of Florida. Dr. Floyd also received a MPH (2012) in Epidemiology from the University of Georgia. 

Saundra Glover

Saundra H. Glover, PhD, MBA, is Director of the Institute for Partnerships to Eliminate Health Disparities at the University of South Carolina.  She is also a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Department of Health Services Policy and Management where she serves as the department’s graduate director.  A 1979 graduate of the School of Business at South Carolina State University, Dr. Glover received her Masters of Business Administration (MBA) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Management and Organizational Behavior from the University of South Carolina.  Her research areas of focus address public health issues that have disparate outcomes for African-American communities, most especially, rural African-American communities from a social determinants conceptual framework with an emphasis on Community Based Participatory Research. Dr. Glover’s research skills and training combined with her strong business management/organizational behavior background, have led to the successful direction and management of several comprehensive NIH and DoD center awards over the past ten years.  Her current research addresses the lack of African-Americans participating in clinical trials to reduce and eliminate stroke disparities.

Ronnie Horner

Ronnie D. Horner, PhD, is Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Healthcare – University of South Carolina and a professor (with tenure) in the Department of Health Services Policy and Management in the Arnold School of Public Health.  In his role as institute director, he works closely with the clinical leadership and faculty of the Greenville Health System, linking them to scientific experts at the university, to conduct innovative research for improving the delivery of health care. Current studies in which he is involved focus on earlier diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders, factors affecting work intensity among oncologists, and the use of marketing techniques (e.g., adaptive choice) to improve colorectal cancer screening adherence.  Dr. Horner is most recently from the University of Cincinnati where he was director of the Institute for the Study of Health and the founding chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences in the College of Medicine which served as the administrative home of the accredited master of public health degree program that he established.  From 2001-2004, Dr. Horner served at National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). At NINDS, he was the founding director of the Health Disparities Research Program where his mission was to develop initiatives to reduce or eliminate disparities in neurological conditions, including stroke. Prior to joining NINDS, Dr. Horner was a Research Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center and a Senior Health Scientist with the Health Services Research Program at the Durham, NC Veterans Affairs Medical Center. While at the Durham VA Medical Center, he established and served as founding director of the VA Epidemiologic Research and Information Center, one of only 3 such centers in the Department of Veteran Affairs.  Dr. Horner earned his doctorate in epidemiology from the Ohio State University in 1984.  His research interests are in healthcare practices and policies, especially those relating to neurological disorders and stroke, that improve health outcomes. Of note, findings from his epidemiologic research into the cause of the outbreak of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis among veterans of the first Gulf War resulted in a change in VA benefits policy. 

Kelli Kenison

Kelli Kenison, PhD received her Ph.D. in Health Promotion, Education and Behavior (HPEB) from the University of South Carolina (USC), Arnold School of Public Health (ASPH) in August of 2011.  During the course of her doctoral studies, Dr. Kenison worked as a full time Research Associate in the HPEB department (2004-2008) and The Center for Health Services and Policy Research (beginning in 2009).  She was appointed as a Research Assistant Professor in the department of Health Services Policy Management (HSPM) in January 2014.  Her research and evaluation practice are primarily related to policy, systems, and environmental changes to reduce childhood obesity.   From 2010 to 2014, she led the evaluation of a four year community-wide obesity prevention project in Colleton County, South Carolina. Currently Dr. Kenison oversees numerous evaluation contracts with the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) including the evaluation of the statewide implementation of FitnessGram.  In addition, she and colleagues from Clemson's Public Health Sciences Department serve as evaluators for the SC Farm to Institution initiative of the SC Department of Agriculture and Eat Smart Move More South Carolina's Let's Go Initiative. 

Mahmud Khan

M. Mahmud Khan, PhD is a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Health Services Policy and Management, Arnold School of Public Health. His current research includes empirical estimation of impact of results based financing (RBF) on efficiency and effectiveness of health care organizations, measuring hospital efficiency, economics of adult and childhood immunization, and economic costs and benefits of eradicating polio. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Khan’s research has included economic evaluation of health interventions, analysis of burden of diseases and associated costs, malpractice threat and physician behavior, quality assessment of health facilities, healthcare financing, economic evaluation of alternative interventions for chronic care and care of elderly. He served in the health economics technical group of the WHO’s Multi-country evaluation of Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses module. He has provided consultancy services to organizations like the World Bank, UNICEF, WHO, Sanofi Pasteur, USAID, and the Swiss Red Cross among others. Prior to joining the University of South Carolina, Dr. Khan was a professor at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, where he received teaching excellence awards twice and was inducted into the Teaching-Scholar society of Tulane’s Medical Center. Dr. Khan received his MS in Theoretical Economics from University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, an MA in economics and PhD in applied economics from Stanford University, California.

Bankole Olatosi

Bankole (Banky) Olatosi, MS, MPH, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Services Policy and Management at the Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina. He has published in the fields of obesity, HIV/AIDS and rural health. He is also actively involved in Data Analytics and Data Mining with a focus on Population Health Analytics. His recent Fitness by Design (FBD) Project was an innovative regionally-focused lifestyle change project targeting low-income families from Wayne, Duplin, and Sampson Counties in North Carolina who are at a high risk for obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. He also previously served as Program Manager for a USAID/Johns Hopkins University funded HIV/AIDS hotlines in Nigeria. As part of his community service, he served as a board member for the Triangle Healthcare Executives Forum (THEF) American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) chapter in Raleigh, North Carolina, and currently serves as a Fellow for the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME).  Dr. Banky Olatosi completed his doctorate in Health Services Policy and Management from the University of South Carolina. He received his Master of Science in Clinical Biochemistry from the University of Lagos in 2002 and completed MPH in Public Health Administration and Policy from the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) in 2004. Dr. Olatosi is also the Program Director for the MHA program in the Department of Health Services Policy and Management.

Jan Ostermann

Jan Ostermann, MS, PhD is an associate professor in the Department of Health Services Policy and Management at the Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina. Dr. Ostermann completed his Ph.D. in Health Policy and Administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and recently joined USC from a multidisciplinary research group at Duke University’s Global Health Institute. Dr. Ostermann’s research targets the intersection of health policy and health economics, and specifically inefficiencies in resource allocation, and disparities in outcomes. His goal is to systematically identify effective and cost effective configurations of policies, services, and incentives to promote health and preventive behaviors in diverse populations and settings. Dr. Ostermann’s portfolio includes domestic and international research, including observational research, research interventions, and program evaluations.  Currently, Dr. Ostermann’s research interests focus on patient preferences and preference-based valuation, as well as wellbeing and resource needs of children.  Dr. Ostermann is a Principal Investigator on an NIH funded grant to evaluate whether offering preference-matched HIV testing options increases uptake of HIV testing in high-risk populations in Tanzania, and a contract to evaluate a program to improve the quality of child care in child development centers across El Salvador. He recently completed a contract with UNICEF Tunisia to evaluate a national cash transfer program to support the education of children in poor families in Tunisia.  Dr. Ostermann has a broad international experience, strong methodological background, passion for using innovative methods and technologies to answer important policy questions, and a track-record of productive multi-national research collaborations.

Janice Probst

Janice Probst, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Health Services Policy and Management, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina and Director of the South Carolina Rural Health Research Center (SCRHRC). Dr. Probst received her undergraduate training at Duke University and her graduate training at Purdue University, Lafayette IN, and the University of South Carolina.  Dr. Probst has extensive experience in health services research, with an emphasis on rural and vulnerable populations. The SCRHRC has received $9.7M for its core grant since 2000.  The SCRHRC contributes to public health both locally and nationally, with work in rural health disparities, health services delivery, oral health, and maternal and child health interventions. Overall, research conducted by SCRHRC faculty currently generates about $1.5M per year to supplement core funding.  The Center also serves as an important source of training for many doctoral students in the department.

Elizabeth Radcliff

Elizabeth Radcliff, PhD received her Ph.D. in Health Services Research from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in May 2014.  She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the South Carolina Rural Health Research Center, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina between August 2014 and June 2015.  Dr. Radcliff was appointed a research assistant professor in the department of Health Services Policy and Research in June 2015.  Dr. Radcliff’s research focuses on access to care and improving health outcomes among at-risk or underserved mothers and children.  Dr. Radcliff is currently the principle investigator for two multi-year projects, both funded through Children’s Trust of South Carolina.  The first project uses social network analyses to examine the system-level impact of federal funding on local communities supporting pregnant and parenting teens.  The second project is an evaluation of home visiting programs in South Carolina that examines both individual health outcomes and systems-level characteristics that may affect individual outcomes.  Dr. Radcliff also holds a Masters of Science in Public Health and a Bachelors of Science in Nursing.  She is a member of the Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health.  Dr. Radcliff is CHES-certified (Certified Health Education Specialist) and has an additional certificate in Global Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Lisa Tisdale Wigfall

Lisa Tisdale Wigfall, PhD received her Ph.D. in Health Promotion, Education and Behavior from the University of South Carolina (USC), Arnold School of Public Health (ASPH) in August of 2009. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in health disparities research at the USC-ASPH Institute for Partnerships to Eliminate Health Disparities from August 2009 to December 2010. Dr. Wigfall was appointed as a research assistant professor in the department of Health Services Policy and Research in January 2011. Dr. Wigfall’s research is focused on reducing health system failures that occur across the cancer care continuum among persons living with HIV/AIDS.  One pilot project that Dr. Wigfall completed was an Administrative Supplement for Community-Engaged Research on HIV/AIDS-Related Cancers Among Underserved Populations. Another pilot study, “Cervical cancer screening and HIV testing behaviors among financially disadvantaged women in South Carolina,” was funded by the Medical University of South Carolina’s South Carolina Clinical and Translational Research Institute (SCTR). Recently she has received a career development award (K01CA175239-01A1) from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). This Mentored Research Scientist Development Award to Promote Diversity will enable her to receive training in health communication, patient navigation, cancer epidemiology, and HPV-mediated cancer biology over a five year period (September 2013-August 2018).

Lauren Workman

Lauren Workman, PhD, MPH, is a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Health Services and Policy Research in the Department of Health Services Policy and Management, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina.  Dr. Workman’s research expertise is in qualitative research methods, with a specific focus on community health development and health systems transformation.  She has a range of experience in the implementation and evaluation of research in areas including maternal and child health, teen pregnancy prevention, and chronic disease prevention.  Her current research is focused on qualitatively evaluating maternal and child health home visiting programs, healthcare networks for uninsured individuals, and community based health promotion interventions.  Dr. Workman received an MPH (2006) and PhD (2013) in Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior from the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health. 

Sudha Xirasagar

Sudha Xirasagar, MBBS, PhD Associate Professor, Department of Health Services Policy and Management, Arnold School of Public Health, received her PhD in health services policy and management from the University of South Carolina, and earlier, her doctor of medicine degree (MBBS) from Bangalore University. She has published over 80 peer-reviewed journal articles in leading high-impact journals in health services policy and clinical medicine, has served on the journal editorial board of a major health services research journal, and is a regular referee for many national and international journals. Her research interests are in the broad areas of quality of care, health and disease predictors and outcomes, racial disparities, care utilization and access and health system performance. Her current research and published work focuses on colorectal cancer screening and treatment, stroke care, physician leadership and provider behavior, clinical epidemiological studies of the predictors of health status, and international health services research. Dr. Xirasagar has received extramural research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, and the Food and Drugs Administration, and has served as a co-investigator on international health projects sponsored by the World Bank. Dr. Xirasagar is an expert in graduate academic program development and accreditation in public health and health administration and has served as the Director/Associate Director of the department’s CAHME-accredited master of health administration program (MHA) for several years. She teaches doctoral courses in health policy, financing and system design, international public health, and leads a Study Abroad program in India on health and development.