Institute of Medicine Appoints Short to Cancer Survivorship Committee
Press Release - October 12, 2004
(University Park, Pa)--Dr. Pamela Farley Short, Penn State professor of health policy and administration and director of the Center for Health Care Policy and Research, has been selected by the Institute of Medicine to serve on its newly formed Cancer Survivorship Committee.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM), a component of The National Academies, provides unbiased, evidence-based, authoritative information and advice on health and medical issues to policy makers, professionals, leaders of every sector of society and the public at large. The Cancer Survivorship Committee has been charged with examining the long-term medical and social consequences of cancer treatment and survival and assessing the quality of care provided to cancer survivors, individuals living beyond their primary cancer treatment. As the result of more patients being successfully treated for cancer, the number of survivors in the United States has reached 10 million.
Over the next year, the committee is expected to submit recommendations to IOM that defines quality care for cancer survivors and propose solutions to enhance access to such care; explores social and economic hardships facing cancer survivors; proposes policies to ameliorate such problems; and describes how to improve what is known about the quality of care and quality of life for cancer survivors and their families.
Short is recognized as a leading national expert on the design and analysis of patient and household surveys related to employment, insurance, health, and health care. Her groundbreaking work has helped shape national policy on health insurance and access to health care, and established her as a national authority on these topics. A member of Penn State's interdepartmental demography faculty and an associate of its Population Research Institute, Short is particularly known for studying changes in people's lives over time. For example, her work on the uninsured emphasizes that millions of people in the U.S. move in and out coverage every month.
Short is currently principal investigator on a grant from the National Cancer Institute that is tracking the long-term economic consequences of cancer and its treatment for survivors. More than 1,800 cancer survivors, some of them treated at Penn State's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, were enrolled in the study and are being interviewed by telephone every year for four years.
Before joining the Penn State faculty in 1997, Short was a senior economist and director of the Center for the Study of Employee Health Benefits for RAND, a private research think tank. She was also a staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisors under President Clinton and served on the Clinton Health Reform Task Force. Before that, she was a deputy director for the Division of Medical Expenditure Studies at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, where she helped direct the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey.
Short received her bachelor's degree with highest honors in economics from Wellesley College and her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University.
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Editors: Dr. Short can be reached at (814) 863-8786 or PamShort@psu.edu.
This press release courtesy of Penn State's Department of Public Information
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