COR Team Members
Director: Jeffrey H. Silber, MD, PhD
Biography
Contact Dr. Silber at:
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
3535 Market Street, Suite 1029
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Phone: 215-590-5635
Center for Outcomes Research
Fax: 215-590-2378
E-mail: silber@email.chop.edu
Positions: Director, Center for Outcomes Research; Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesia, and Health Care Systems
Departments: Pediatrics; Anesthesia; Health Care Systems
Education: MD, Johns Hopkins Medical School, 1980; PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1990
Jeffrey Silber, MD, PhD, is the director of the Center for Outcomes Research at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
and a professor of pediatrics and anesthesia at the University
of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, with appointments in the Division of
Oncology and Epidemiology
and Biostatistics. Dr. Silber is also professor of Health Care Systems
at The Wharton
School, where he teaches courses on outcomes research. He is a senior
fellow of the Leonard Davis
Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition he is a pediatric oncologist and an attending physician in the Pediatric
Oncology Survivorship Clinic at Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Silber is a nationally recognized authority on severity adjustment in outcomes
research and is widely published in diverse areas of health services research.
His publications include articles on the selection of outcome measures,
papers concerning severity adjustment for specific outcomes, clinical economic
studies in pediatric and adult populations, and publications based on applications
of multivariate matching in outcomes research. He developed the outcome
measure “failure-to-rescue” in 1990 which became an AHRQ Patient
Safety Indicator, and has conducted numerous studies on the relationship
between death and complication rates as derived from Medicare claims data.
Research Interests: Quality of care, clinical
economics, medical decision making, statistical modeling of predictions
and outcomes, delayed consequences of cancer therapy
Associate Director: Orit Even-Shoshan, MS
Biography
Contact Orit Even-Shoshan at:
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
3535 Market Street, Suite 1029
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Phone: 215-590-2809
Center for Outcomes Research
Fax: 215-590-2378
E-mail: shoshan@email.chop.edu
Position: Associate Director, Center for Outcomes Research
Orit Even-Shoshan, MS, has master's degrees in economics and in healthcare financial management. She is the associate director of the Center for Outcomes Research at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and a senior fellow of the Leonard
Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
She has served as the project manager for numerous studies that utilized
very large Medicare files. Ms. Even-Shoshan has extensive experience and knowledge of Medicare data, the changes it underwent over time, its limitations as well as its adequacy for various analyses. She has experience in identifying and obtaining research databases and linking them to the main file. Ms. Even-Shoshan also prepares submissions to the IRB at Children's Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania and ensures that the handling and storage of data at the Center for Outcomes Research meets all HIPPA requirements.
Research Interests: Outcomes research, severity of illness
risk adjustment, cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness analysis, physician payment
Faculty: Scott A. Lorch, MD, MSCE
Biography
Contact Dr. Lorch at:
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
3535 Market Street, Suite 1029
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Phone: 215-590-1714
Center for Outcomes Research
Fax: 215-590-2378
E-mail: lorch@email.chop.edu
Position: Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Department: Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology
Education: MD, Northwestern University Medical School, 1996; MSCE, University of Pennsylvania, 2003
Scott Lorch, MD, MSCE, is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and a member of the Division of Neonatology at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He has appointments in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests focus on the causes for variations in outcomes and healthcare use of children, particularly premature infants. He is the principal investigator of two federal research grants, an R01 grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality focusing on the impact of perinatal regionalization on the quality of neonatal care and an R40 grant from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the Health Resources and Services Administration, designed to study measures of neonatal quality of care. Besides quality of care, Dr. Lorch's research has also led to publications on the role of racial and socioeconomic disparities on the care received by premature infants; the cost and cost-effectiveness of neonatal and pediatric treatments; and the influence of geography on the length of stay of pediatric hospitalized patients. Dr. Lorch has published works in many peer-reviewed journals and has presented extensively at the Society of Pediatric Research, AcademyHealth and the American Public Health Association meetings.
Research Interests: Variations in the clinical outcome of premature infants and children, root causes for racial disparities in pediatric and perinatal outcomes, cost-effectiveness studies, role of treatment location and public policies on pediatric outcomes
Faculty: Tanguy J. Brachet, PhD
Biography
Contact Dr. Brachet at:
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
3535 Market Street, Suite 1029
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Phone: 215-590-5758
Center for Outcomes Research
Fax: 215-590-2378
E-mail: brachet@email.chop.edu
Position: Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care
Department: Anesthesiology and Critical Care
Education: PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2006
Tanguy Brachet, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He received his doctorate in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, where his dissertation focused on estimating the causal relationship between prenatal maternal smoking and early infant health when information on maternal tobacco use is misreported or mismeasured.
Research Interests: Long term consequences of prenatal maternal smoking, relationship between education and health, intergenerational transmission of health, explaining trends in obesity, applied econometrics
Program Director: Stephanie Smith-Simone, PhD, MPh
Biography
Contact Dr. Smith-Simone at:
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
3535 Market Street, Suite 1029
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Phone: 215-590-6895
Center for Outcomes Research
Fax: 215-590-2378
E-mail: smithsimone@email.chop.edu
Position: Program Director
Department: Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology
Education: MPH, Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, 2001; PhD, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2006
Stephanie Smith-Simone, PhD, MPH is the Program Director for the Center for Outcomes Research overseeing the pediatric risk adjustment program, funded by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She was previously a postdoctoral fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Princeton University. Dr. Smith-Simone has a PhD from the Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she graduated with honors and was inducted into the Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health, Alpha Chapter (2006). Her past research evaluated the impact of health policies and modifiable health behaviors on health outcomes. Specifically, she has examined the impact of clean indoor air policies on smoking behavior and health outcomes, risk and harm perceptions of waterpipe use among college students, and mechanisms to increase consumer demand among low-income and ethnic minority populations for tobacco cessation products and services. Prior to her doctoral studies, Stephanie served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, and the American Cancer Society - Center for Tobacco Cessation.
Research Interests: Smoking behavior, health policy, adolescent and young-adult health, cancer prevention and control, risk assessment and communication
Research Team
Laura Jill Bressler, BA
bresslerl@email.chop.edu
Laura Bressler is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where she majored in biology with a special focus in health care management and policy. She has worked as a research assistant at the Center for Outcomes Research since 2007.
Corinne Fager, MS
fager@email.chop.edu
Corinne Fager, MS, is a statistical programmer who has worked at the Center for Outcomes Research since 2007. She has a master's degree in applied statistics from Villanova University.
Julia Meurling, MPH
meurling@email.chop.edu
Julia Meurling, MPH, is a project manager for the Obesity and Surgical Outcomes (OBSOS) study. She has a master's of public health degree in epidemiology from Columbia University and her training includes working on the Early Life Factors in Adult Health Study at Columbia and at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene working on West Nile virus surveillance. Her interests include study design, methodology and data collection. Ms. Meurling joined the Center for Outcomes Research in 2006.
Lanyu Mi, MS
mil@email.chop.edu
Lanyu Mi, MS, is a statistical programmer who has worked at the Center for Outcomes Research since 2006. She has a master's degree in statistics.
Richard Ross, MS
ross@email.chop.edu
Richard Ross, MS, a statistical programmer at the Center for Outcomes Research, has a master's degree in biostatistics from Johns Hopkins. He has over 10 years experience as an analyst and statistician on healthcare related studies using Medicare data. Mr. Ross has analyzed large databases of patient and hospital information to construct models predicting mortality, complications and other quality of care measures using diagnostic, physiological and socio-demographic information. He has extensive experience with statistical programming packages and the presentation of results at meetings. He has been at Penn and working with Drs. Silber and Rosenbaum since 1991.
Yun Teng, MS
tengy@email.chop.edu
Yun Teng joined the Center for Outcomes Research in June 2007. She is a statistical programmer focusing on the creation and maintenance of large administrative databases and on statistical modeling. Ms. Teng has a master's degree in statistics from the Montclair State University, NJ.
Yanli Wang, MS
wang@email.chop.edu
Yanli Wang, MS, a statistical programmer, has worked at the Center for Outcomes Research since 2004. She has a master's degree in statistics, and has developed expertise in handling large databases and creating analysis files from raw data.
Hong Zhou, MS
zhou@email.chop.edu
Hong Zhou, MS, has been the systems analyst at the Center for Outcomes Research since 1997. She has a bachelor's degree in engineering, a master's degree in economics and a master's degree in information science management. Her expertise focuses on Unix system administration tasks and database management. She evaluates and chooses hardware and software, and she maintains the reliability of computer systems and improves their efficiency. She also handles very large national databases to support the work of investigators, faculties and research staff on various projects.
Administrative Coordinator
Traci Frank
frank@email.chop.edu
Ms. Frank has served as the administrative coordinator at the Center for Outcomes Research since its inception. Previously, she worked at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.