Project Categories

A Case-Based Approach to the Ethical and Policy Issues Raised by Living Donor Transplantation

Award Year: 2013 Investigator: Lainie Friedman Ross
The purpose of the research is to explore the ethical and policy issues raised by transplantation with living donors.

Emotional Adaptation and the Goals of Health Care Policy

Award Year: 2007 Investigator: Peter Ubel
Researchers have shown that people can adapt emotionally to a wide range of adverse circumstances. But predictions about how fully people will or will not adapt to serious illness and disability, either physical or mental, are often wrong. For example, people with quadriplegia report moods and quality of life that are similar to those reported by people who are healthy, and exceed what healthy people believe their moods and quality of life would be if they were to become quadriplegic.

The Challenge of Living Organ Donors to Social and Health Policy

Award Year: 2003 Investigator: David Rothman, Sheila Rothman
A decade ago, most transplants were performed using organs from people immediately after death. Now, especially in the field of kidney transplantation, nearly half of the organs used for transplants in the U.S. come from living donors. Sheila M. Rothman, Ph.D. and David J. Rothman, Ph.D. address the meaning and policy implications of this new reliance on living organ donors for patients, families, physicians, and the general public.

Limit-Setting in Managed Care and Other Health Delivery Systems: Legitimacy, Fair Process, and the Goals of Health Care Reform

Award Year: 1997 Investigator: Norman Daniels
This project integrates theoretical work on justice and health care with practical research on decision-making and limit-setting in managed care organizations (MCOs). Dr. Daniels explores the issue of legitimacy and its role in decisions by private insurers and governments that affect patient welfare.

Rationality and Consent in the New Medical Marketplace

Award Year: 1996 Investigator: M. Gregg Bloche
Conflicts have erupted among patients, providers, and payers as a result of the market-driven transformation of the American health care system. These are playing out in coverage decisions by payers, selective contracting between plans and providers, tort liability cases, disclosure and consent issues, and the protection of health information privacy. Dr.

Economic Constraints, Trust and Evolving Patient-Provider Relationships

Award Year: 1994 Investigator: David Mechanic
The public's trust in physicians is an essential aspect of health care delivery. As tensions grow between new medical possibilities and expenditure limits, innovative mechanisms are needed to settle disputes if litigation and other costly transactions are to be minimized. Dr. Mechanic uses trust as a conceptual frame to understand better evolving structures, possible mediating institutions, and the social and ethical implications of varying models of doctor-patient relationships.

Ethics and Allocation: The Foundations of American Health Care Policy

Award Year: 1994 Investigator: Ruth Faden, G. Madison Powers
Few authors have looked critically at both the moral foundations and conceptual underpinnings of welfare economics upon which analytic techniques in health care policy are based. This study examines the values and assumptions underlying alternative models of health care allocation cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness, and cost-utility and their application to health care policy.