The challenges facing our health care system remain at the forefront of national concern. To address these complex issues and improve health and health care for all Americans, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) created the Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research program, which supports cutting-edge research and bold new ideas to inform health policy in the United States. The program awards scholars and researchers up to $335,000 to explore innovative solutions to resolving challenges in health care. The eight award recipients are:

• Eiko Ikegami, PhD, New School University
• Carla Keirns, MD, PhD, Stony Brook University
• Suzanne Mettler, PhD, Cornell University
• Harold Pollack, PhD, MPP, University of Chicago
• Susan P. Shapiro, PhD, American Bar Foundation
• Anthony So, MD, MPA, Duke University
• Debra J. Umberson, PhD, MSW, University of Texas at Austin
• Susan M. Wolf, JD, University of Minnesota Law School

This prestigious and highly competitive funding program attracts investigators from a wide range of fields including medicine, nursing, public health, economics, sociology, political science, psychology, history, law, ethics, journalism, communications, public and social policy, and others. A national advisory committee of distinguished experts from fields similar to those of the investigators reviews applications and makes funding recommendations to the Foundation.

The members of the 2011-2012 national advisory committee (NAC), which includes seven past Investigator Awardees, are:

• Paul D. Cleary, PhD, Yale University, NAC Chair
• Sheila Burke, RN, MPA, Harvard University
• Lawrence Casalino, MD, PhD, Weill Cornell Medical College, 1999 Awardee
• Susan Dentzer, Health Affairs
• Judy Feder, PhD, Georgetown University
• Bruce G. Link, PhD, Columbia University, 1995 Awardee
• Catherine G. McLaughlin, PhD, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.
• Mark A. Peterson, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles, 1994 Awardee
• Jill B. Quadagno, PhD, Florida State University, 1999 Awardee
• Jeannette Rogowski, PhD, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
• Sara Rosenbaum, JD, George Washington University, 2000 Awardee
• Mark J. Schlesinger, PhD, Yale University, 1993 Awardee
• Alvin R. Tarlov, MD, University of Chicago (Retired)
• William A. Vega, PhD, University of Southern California
• Keith A. Wailoo, PhD, Princeton University, 2001 Awardee

RWJF’s Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research program supports talented researchers, typically in the more senior stages of their careers. Funded projects produce enduring insights and sophisticated analyses of pressing problems, potential solutions for improving health and health care, and evidence that can inform policymakers, the media, and the public. Since 1992, the Foundation has supported 175 projects involving 224 investigators.

“Through the Investigators’ program, the Foundation invests in ideas and individuals – investments that pay off long after the research grants have ended,” said Lori Melichar, PhD, economist and senior program officer in Research and Evaluation at RWJF. “The books and articles resulting from Investigators’ research contribute to the public discourse in health policy. The program also provides the Investigators with opportunities to join the debate on health policy issues, and influence how policymakers think about the challenges of providing and financing health care and improving the health of the nation.”

David Mechanic, PhD, leads the RWJF Investigator Awards program, which is headquartered at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. “This program supports thinking that is creative and cross-disciplinary in search of knowledge and solutions to emerging problems or vexing questions that will help to improve the nation’s health and health care,” Mechanic says.

A brief description of each new investigator project follows.

"A marvelous collection of ideas and insights by first-rate scholars. This book lays a foundation for more creative and effective policy-making." - Stephen M. Shortell, Dean and Blue Cross of California Professor of Health Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley

Health care delivery in the United States is an enormously complex enterprise, and its $1.6 trillion annual expenditures involve a host of competing interests. While arguably the nation offers among the most technologically advanced medical care in the world, the American system consistently under performs relative to its resources. Gaps in financing and service delivery pose major barriers to improving health, reducing disparities, achieving universal insurance coverage, enhancing quality, controlling costs, and meeting the needs of patients and families.

Bringing together twenty-five of the nation's leading experts in health care policy and public health, this book provides a much-needed perspective on how our health care system evolved, why we face the challenges that we do, and why reform is so difficult to achieve. The essays tackle tough issues including: socioeconomic disadvantage, tobacco, obesity, gun violence, insurance gaps, the rationing of services, the power of special interests, medical errors, and the nursing shortage.

Linking the nation's health problems to larger political, cultural, and philosophical contexts, Policy Challenges in Modern Health Care offers a compelling look at where we stand and where we need to be headed.

It is now more common for an American adult to live alone than with family or a roommate, and Klinenberg analyzes the challenges and opportunities these people face: young professionals who pay higher rent for the freedom and privacy of their own apartments; singles in their thirties and forties who refuse to compromise their career or lifestyle for an unsatisfying partner; divorced men and women who no longer believe that marriage is a reliable source of happiness or stability; and the elderly, most of whom prefer living by themselves to living with friends or their children. Living alone is more the rule than the exception in places like Manhattan, half of whose residents live by themselves, and many of America's largest cities, where more than a third of the population does. Drawing on over three hundred interviews with men and women of all ages and every class who live alone, Klinenberg reaches a startling conclusion: In a world of ubiquitous media and hyperconnectivity, this way of life helps us discover ourselves and appreciate the pleasure of good company.

To demonstrate the powerfully enduring impact of place, Robert J. Sampson presents here the fruits of over a decade’s research in Chicago combined with his own unique personal observations about life in the city, from Cabrini Green to Trump Tower and Millennium Park to the Robert Taylor Homes. He discovers that neighborhoods influence a remarkably wide variety of social phenomena, including crime, health, civic engagement, home foreclosures, teen births, altruism, leadership networks, and immigration. Even national crises cannot halt the impact of place, Sampson finds, as he analyzes the consequences of the Great Recession and its aftermath, bringing his magisterial study up to the fall of 2010.

Description: Patients as Policy Actors offers groundbreaking accounts of one of the health field's most important developments of the last fifty years--the rise of more consciously patient-centered care and policymaking. The authors in this volume illustrate, from multiple disciplinary perspectives, the unexpected ways that patients can matter as both agents and objects of health care policy yet nonetheless too often remain silent, silenced, misrepresented, or ignored. The volume concludes with a unique epilogue outlining principles for more effectively integrating patient perspectives into a pluralistic conception of policy-making. With the recent enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, patients' and consumers' roles in American health care require more than ever the careful analysis and attention exemplified by this innovative volume.