Dr. John F. Burton, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University
Dr. Burton is currently Professor Emeritus in the School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) at Rutgers University. He is the Editor of the Workers’ Compensation Policy Review. He is a member of the Executive Board of the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) and is also a member of the NASI Workers’ Compensation Steering Committee. Burton previously served as Dean of SMLR and as a faculty member at Cornell University and the University of Chicago.
Burton has conducted research, served as a consultant, and assisted with the formulation of public policy for many years. He was the Chair of the National Commission on State Workmen’s Compensation Laws, which submitted its report to the President and Congress in 1972. He has served as a consultant to a number of jurisdictions, including Florida, Michigan, Washington, Oregon, New York, Massachusetts, and Ontario. His book with Monroe Berkowitz, Permanent Disability Benefits in Workers’ Compensation, received the Kulp Award from the American Risk and Insurance Association. Burton was President of the Industrial Relations Research Association in 2002. He also was the editor of John Burton’s Workers’ Compensation Monitor from 1988 to 1997. He has a law degree and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan.
Dr. Michael Sullivan, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology and Director, University Centre for Research on Pain & Disability, University of Montreal
Dr. Sullivan is a Professor of Psychology at the Université de Montréal, and Scientific Director of the University Centre for Research on Pain and Disability. Dr. Sullivan has lectured nationally and internationally on the social and behavioral determinants of pain-related disability. He is known primarily for his research on the relation between catastrophic thinking and pain experience, and for the development of community-based approaches to the management of pain-related disability. He has published over 100 scientific papers, 12 chapters, and 4 books. Dr. Sullivan obtained his undergraduate training at McGill University and his graduate training at Concordia University in Montreal.
Walton Francis
Consultant for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, US Department of Health and Human Services
Mr. Francis is a self-employed economist and policy analyst, expert in the analysis and evaluation of public programs. He has most recently served as a consultant to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on establishing regulatory standards for, and creating consumer information on, Medicare Advantage and Medicare prescription drug plans established under the Medicare Modernization Act.
He developed regulatory, budgetary, and legislative reforms for many policies and programs, while working at the Office of Management and Budget and in the Office of the Secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services. At HHS he won awards for eliminating unnecessary burden from regulations and making regulation of health services more cost-effective. He has written extensively on regulatory reform and review.He pioneered the systematic comparison of health insurance plans from a consumer perspective, and has for over 25 years authored the annual CHECKBOOK’s Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees. He has written, and testified before Congress, on reforming the Federal Employees insurance program and on reforming Medicare. He was co-Webmaster of the HHS departmental Web site in the mid-1990s and co-designed online versions of CHECKBOOK's Guide at www.guidetohealthplans.org). His education includes Master’s degrees from Yale and Harvard universities.
Larry Fricks
Director of the Appalachian Consulting Group, Inc.
Mr. Fricks currently serves as the Director of the Appalachian Consulting Group, Inc. For nearly 13 years Larry was Georgia’s Director of the Office of Consumer Relations and Recovery in the Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Addictive Diseases. He is a founder of the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network, Inc. that now has some 3,000 members, a founder of the Georgia Consumer Council, a founder of Georgia’s Peer Specialist Training and Certification and a founder of the Georgia Peer Support Institute. He served on the Planning Board for the Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance and the Board of Directors of the National Mental Health Association. He is also on the Advisory Board for The Carter Center Mental Health Journalism Fellowships.
He is the 1995 recipient of the Clifford W. Beers Award given annually by the National Mental Health Association and the 2001 recipient of the American Association for World Health Award for significant contributions to improving community mental health. In 2004 he received the Recovery Award from International Association of Psychosocial Rehabilitation Services. He has a journalism degree from the University of Georgia and has won journalism awards from the Associated Press, the Georgia Press Association, Gannett Newspapers, the National Mental Health Association of Georgia and the National Alliance for The Mentally Ill - Georgia.
Dr. Jay Himmelstein, MD, MPH
Director, University of Massachusetts Center for Health Policy and Research
Dr. Himmelstein is a board certified physician in Internal Medicine and Occupational Health/Preventive Medicine. He has served as the Assistant Chancellor for health Policy at the University of Massachusetts Medical School since 1992, and has directed the Center for Health Policy and Research at the University, which he developed, since 1997.
He came to the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1983 initially as Chief of Occupational Health Services and in 1988 became the Director of the Occupational and Environmental Health Program. In 1991, Dr. Himmelstein was selected to be a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow and spent his sabbatical year as a member of the health staff for the Senator Labor and Human Resources Committee where he worked on issues of national health reform and integration of workers' compensation with other health and disability benefit systems.
At this time Dr. Himmelstein's primary activities include directing the UMass Center for Health Policy and Research, directing a national grant program for The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (the Workers' Compensation Health Initiative), and directing a health policy partnership with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) as a component of University of Massachusetts Commonwealth Medicine. Dr. Himmelstein continues to maintain his practice of occupational medicine as well as his health policy research interests including Medicaid policy, health care quality, workers' compensation medical care, and general health services research. He completed his medical school training at the University of Maryland, his residency in Internal Medicine at Mt. Auburn Hospital Hospital, and his residency in Occupational and Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Dr. Joseph Newhouse, PhD
John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Dr. Newhouse is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard University, Director of the Division of Health Policy Research and Education, chair of the Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy, and Director of the Interfaculty Initiative in Health Policy. He is a member of the faculties of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, as well as a Faculty Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Newhouse spent the first twenty years of his career at RAND, where he designed and directed the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, which studied the consequences of different ways of financing medical services. From 1981 to 1985 he was Head of the RAND Economics Department.
In 1981 he became the founding editor of the Journal of Health Economics, which he continues to edit. He is a current member of the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine and a past member of the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine and has served two terms on its governing Council. He has also been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a past President of the Association for Health Services Research (now AcademyHealth) and of the International Health Economics Association and is the inaugural President of the American Society of Health Economists. He has served as the vice-chair of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which reviews Medicare payment policy and makes recommendations to the Congress. This Commission resulted from the 1997 merger of two predecessor commissions, the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission and the Physician Payment Review Commission. Newhouse chaired the former Commission and served as a Commissioner on the latter. He served as a regent of the National Library of Medicine from 1999 to 2003. He is among the 250 most cited authors in the fields of economics and business, using citations to articles published between 1981 and 1999. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Aetna, Abt Associates, and the National Committee for Quality Assurance.
He was the first recipient of the David N. Kershaw Award and Prize of the Association for Public Policy and Management in 1983, which honors persons under 40 who have made a distinguished contribution to the field of public policy analysis and management. In 1988 he received the Baxter Health Services Research Prize for an unusually significant contribution to the improved medical care of the public through innovative health services research, as well as the Administrator’s Citation from the Health Care Financing Administration. He received B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from Harvard University. Following his Bachelors degree, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Germany.
Dr. Richard Luecking, Ed.D.
President, TransCen, Inc.
Dr. Luecking is the President of TransCen, Inc., a nonprofit organization founded to be a transition center that develops links between a variety of public and publicly-funded entities that affect the success of youth with disabilities as they transition from school to work and adult life. President of TransCen since 1987, Dr. Luecking has been responsible for implementing numerous model demonstration and research projects related to the school-to-work transition and to the employment of individuals with disabilities. He and his colleagues at TransCen have initiated a range of local school-to-work transition and employment programs, which have been replicated throughout the country, including the Bridges…from school to work program sponsored by the Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities. As a result of this work, he is often invited to provide training and technical assistance on developing transitional work programs throughout the nation. From 1997 to 1999, he also served as a temporary appointee to the National School-to-Work Office, where he was assigned to promote employer involvement in school-to-work initiatives nationwide. Dr. Luecking is the author of numerous publications on transition and employment. He has held leadership positions in various professional associations and organizations in addition to participating in a host of national-level activities and initiatives designed to improve educational and employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities.
Mary Beth Senkewicz
Health Policy Consultant
Mary Beth Senkewicz is a consultant on health insurance issues. Most recently, she was the senior counsel for health policy at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners where she supervised all NAIC staff support work for the NAIC's Health Insurance and Managed Care (B) Committee, its three task forces (Senior Issues, Regulatory Framework and Health Insurance) and numerous working groups. She was the NAIC representative and immediate past president of the Board of the Long Term Care Insurance Educational Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides a nonpartisan educational forum about the evolving long-term care insurance marketplace. Mary Beth was also NAIC representative and chair of the National Committee on Quality Assurance's Public Sector Advisory Committee. Prior to joining NAIC, she supervised the Consumer Affairs Division of the Wyoming Insurance Department and served as the Insurance Department's liaison to the Governor's Health Care Reform Commission. She is also a former executive director of the Wyoming State Bar. Mary Beth earned her law degree from St. John's University and her bachelor's degrees in English and philosophy from Cabrini College.
John Kemp
Principal, Law Firm of Powers, Pyles, Sutter & Verville, P.C.
John D. Kemp is widely respected for his many achievements, both in the corporate and non-profit worlds. As a person with personal disability experience who uses four prostheses, John inspires others to achieve the impossible through knowledge, experience, vision, personality, and persistence. Mr. Kemp graduated from Georgetown University in 1971 and from Washburn University School of Law in 1974. Mr. Kemp was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Law from Washburn University School of Law in May, 2003.
In March 2006, Mr. Kemp received the Henry B. Betts Award, widely regarded as America’s highest honor for disability leadership and service. Presented jointly by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), the Betts Award recognizes a person’s work and scope of influence that have significantly improved the quality of life for people with disabilities in the past and who continues to be a force for change in the future
With more than 45 years of direct experience in the disability movement, John D. Kemp has partnered, worked for and served on the Boards of Directors of some of the leading disability and nonprofit organizations such as: United Cerebral Palsy Associations, Very Special Arts, HalfthePlanet Foundation, Independent Sector, The Abilities Fund Inc., Disability Service Providers of America, Easter Seals, Goodwill Industries of America, and the U.S. International Council on Disabilities, to name a few. In 1995, Mr. Kemp co-founded AAPD and continues to serve on their board today. During his tenure with Kemp & Young, Inc., John D. Kemp developed disability employment management training and consulting services.
Kemp currently serves on the Medicaid Commission as well as the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Persons with Disabilities which guides the Secretary of State and the Administrator of the Agency for International Development (USAID) in the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy and assistance with respect to people with disabilities.
| File Type | application/msword |
| File Title | Proposed Group Members Bios |
| Author | MDRCTECH |
| Last Modified By | Faye |
| File Modified | 2007-05-10 |
| File Created | 2007-05-10 |