Twenty Pardee RANDites Present at APPAM in Chicago

November 10, 2017

Pardee RAND was well represented at APPAM's 39th annual fall research conference in Chicago, November 2–4. The theme of the conference was Measurement Matters: Better Data for Better Decisions.

Several students and recent alumni presented their work in poster sessions:

• Michele Abbott (cohort '14): Measuring Risk and Variation in Household Social Determinants of Health
• Lauren Davis ('15), A 50 Year Stalemate: An Examination of the Bureaucracy Surrounding the United States Poverty Measure
• Marlon Graf ('12), Are Community Health Workers saving lives? A longitudinal analysis of state-level variation in Community Health Workforce
• Sujeong Park ('15), The Impact of Remaining Contract Period on Health Behavior and Outcomes of Precarious Workers
• Youngbok Ryu ('11), How Firm-level Network Characteristics Influence the Technology Transition Performance of U.S. DoD SBIR Program?
• Mahal Woldetsadik ('13), Long-term Impact of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence on Women and Families: Preliminary Evidence from War-affected Regions of Northern Uganda
• Cameron Wright ('12), Choose Wisely: A Case Study of College Student and Advisor Perspectives on Major Field of Study Choices

Alumni, students, and faculty also participated in panels:

• Alum Lindsay Daugherty (cohort '05) presented on the panel Reforming Developmental Education: Evidence from Texas; students Diana Carew ('15) and Alexandra Mendoza-Graf ('16) were coauthors on her paper, "Accelerating Students into College-Level Coursework: Approaches of Community Colleges to Texas State Policy Around Co-Requisite Support Models."
• Alum Bogdan Savych ('02) presented on the panel Health Policy and Opioids; his paper was titled "Opioid Use And Duration Of Disability."
• Alum Michael Shires ('90) organized and moderated a roundtable on Building Better Data Systems for Better Decisions within the Field of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration.
• Claire O'Hanlon ('13) was on a Health Policy panel discussing Practice Structure. She presented on "Impact of Vertical and Horizontal Physician Practice Consolidation on Referral Network Size, Strength, and Stability." She was also on a student panel, Competition and Integration in Health Care Markets, where she presented a paper on "An Exploratory, Mixed Methods Case Study of the Impact of Healthcare Industry Consolidation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania."
• Ryu chaired the student panel Networks, Innovation, and Regions.
• Woldetsadik and Tim McDonald ('16) were panelists on International Cooperation and Conflict and each presented a paper. Woldetsadik's paper was "Examining Donor Approaches to Gender Programming for Post-Conflict Reconstruction & Peacebuilding in War-Affected countries in Africa and Asia"; McDonald's was "Effective Leadership For Wicked Global Problems: Jean Monnet’s Methods for International Cooperation from WW-I to European Integration"
• Associate Dean Rachel Swanger chaired a panel on Protecting Critical Infrastructure. She also participated in a panel for students, To Get a PhD Degree or Not Get a PhD Degree?
• Assistant Dean Gery Ryan chaired a panel on Community Resilience.
• Professor Phil Armour participated in a panel on Social Security, Labor Market Institutions, and Older Workers; his paper was "The Reintroduction of the Social Security Statement and Its Effect on Social Security Expectations, Retirement Savings, and Labor Supply Across the Age Distribution."
• Professor Heather Schwartz was a discussant on the panel Understanding the Locational Decisions and Outcomes of Assisted Housing Recipients.

Swanger and Ryan also hosted the annual APPAM reception for Pardee RAND alumni, students, and faculty attending the conference. Alumni attendees included Graf, Ryu, Savych, Shires, and Ethan Scherer ('07). Professor Armour and Faculty Leaders Program alumni Luther Brewster and Yamile Molina were there, as were students Abbott, Davis, Harvey, McDonald, Mendoza-Graf, O'Hanlon, Park, Perera, and Wright.