Publications

July 2015
Background Note

The State of U.S. Public Health: Challenges and Trends

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Howard Koh and Pamela Yatsko

The World Health Organization defines health as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity." For many Americans, the World Health Organization's definition of true health seems unattainable, given... View Details

Keywords: Public Health; Public Sector; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States

21 Nov 2012
Research & Ideas

What Health Care Managers Need to Know--and How to Teach Them

digital platform, and the increased fiscal pressures created by the worldwide economic crisis. Unfortunately, the educational programs for future health care leaders fail to provide many of the needed... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Guttry; Health; Health

02 Mar 2007
What Do You Think?

What Is the Government’s Role in US Health Care?

government's role in U.S. healthcare? What do you think? To Read More: Robert H. Frank, "A Health Care Plan So Simple, Even Stephen Colbert Couldn't Simplify It," The New York Times, February 18, 2007, p. C3. He is the author of a book,... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Health

20 Jul 2020
Op-Ed

It's Time for a Bipartisan Health Plan for Employers and Employees

The recent twin economic and pandemic calamities should cause us to rethink the status quo for health insurance compensation. Must General Motors be a benefits company that happens to make cars? Is it in the... View Details

Keywords: by Regina E. Herzlinger and Richard J. Boxer; Health; Health

2012
Article

Behavioral Economics and the Psychology of Fruit and Vegetable Consumption

By: Joe Price and Jason Riis

Behavioral economics is an emerging paradigm that challenges the assumptions and predictions of classical economics. This new paradigm emphasizes that consumers do not always make optimal use of available information nor do they always make choices and tradeoffs in a... View Details

Keywords: Plant-Based Agribusiness; Food; Social Marketing; Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior; Nutrition

2020
Chapter

Health Care Markets a Decade After the ACA: Bigger, but Probably Not Better

By: Leemore S. Dafny

Love it or hate it, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) embraced and extended the role of private markets in financing and delivering health care in the United States. Ten years after the ACA’s passage, it is unclear whether health care markets are better (along a range of... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Markets; Laws and Statutes; Outcome or Result; Health Industry; United States

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04 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

Attention Medical Shoppers: What Health Care Can Learn from Walmart and Amazon

economy, but it uses IT the least." —David Cutler "We're not really in the post-reform era yet," said HBS professor Robert Huckman, faculty co-chair of the HBS Health Care Initiative. He introduced the three panelists:... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

February 2009 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Cleveland Clinic: Transformation and Growth 2015

By: Michael E. Porter and Elizabeth O. Teisberg

The Cleveland Clinic's health care services are internationally renowned for quality. In 2008, The Clinic began to restructure the organization into teams defined around patient needs, rather than traditional medical specialties. "Patients First!" takes shape as the... View Details

Keywords: Health; Health Care Operations; Health Care Quality; Health Care; Strategy And Leadership; Strategy Development; Health Care and Treatment; Leading Change; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Measurement and Metrics; Service Delivery; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Outcome or Result; Health Industry; Cleveland

October 2020
Case

Fiscal Responses to COVID-19

By: Rawi Abdelal, Rafael Di Tella, Vincent Pons and Galit Goldstein

For the first half of 2020, the COVID-19 crisis seemed on the verge of spiraling out of control. The business world struggled to figure out what COVID meant for macroeconomics. Extended restrictions limiting human interaction meant an end to normal economic production,... View Details

Keywords: Fiscal Policy; COVID; COVID-19; Economic Analysis; Economic Downturn; Economic Conditions; Economic Governance; Economic Systems; Economy; Health Pandemics; Finance; Policy; United States; Germany; France; European Union

Research Summary

Overview

By: John Beshears

In his research, Professor Beshears shows how managers can influence the behavior of customers and employees by changing the decision-making environment to call attention to a decision, to use psychological framing to shape assessments of options, or to help... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Consumer Finance; Household Finance; Health Care; Organizational Economics; Decision Making; Economics; Negotiation; Behavioral Finance

January 2007 (Revised April 2011)
Case

Farmacias Similares: Private and Public Health Care for the Base of the Pyramid in Mexico

By: Michael Chu and Regina Garcia-Cuellar

Farmacias Similares, serving Mexico's low-income sector, grew to $600 million sales and 3,400 drugstores while deep reforms to help the poor swept the public health system. Adjacent to each store, for $2 per visit, medical clinics provided access to doctors for 2.3... View Details

Keywords: Private Sector; Public Sector; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Poverty; Pharmaceutical Industry; Retail Industry; Mexico

2010
Working Paper

Evaluating the Effects of Large-Scale Health Interventions in Developing Countries: The Zambian Malaria Initiative

By: Nava Ashraf, Gunther Fink and David N. Weil

Since 2003, Zambia has been engaged in a large-scale, centrally coordinated national anti-malaria campaign which has become a model in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper aims at quantifying the individual and macro level benefits of this campaign, which involved mass... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Developing Countries and Economies; Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Performance Evaluation; Programs; Health Industry; Zambia

September 2020
Case

West Side United: Hospitals Tackle the Racial Health and Wealth Gap

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Paul Stramaglia

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. David Ansell, Darlene Hightower, and Ayesho Jaco, leaders of West Side United (WSU), a coalition of Chicago hospitals, community residents, banks, and small businesses conceived in 2016, reviewed progress toward WSU’s goal of ending... View Details

Keywords: COVID; COVID-19; Hospital; Coalition; Health Pandemics; Race; Health; Wealth and Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Change; Leadership; Chicago

2016
Chapter

Evaluating the Effects of Large Scale Health Interventions in Developing Countries: The Zambian Malaria Initiative

By: Nava Ashraf, Gunther Fink and David N. Weil

Since 2003, Zambia has been engaged in a large-scale, centrally coordinated national anti-Malaria campaign, which has become a model in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper aims at quantifying the individual and macro-level benefits of this campaign, which involved mass... View Details

Keywords: Programs; Health Pandemics; Developing Countries and Economies; Zambia

April 27, 2022
Article

Inequality in Researchers' Minds: Four Guiding Questions for Studying Subjective Perceptions of Economic Inequality

By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Shai Davidai, Daniela Goya-Tocchetto, Barnabas Szaszi, Martin Day, Stephanie Tepper, L. Taylor Phillips, M. Usman Mirza, Nailya Ordabayeva and Oliver P. Hauser

Subjective perceptions of inequality can substantially influence policy attitudes, public health metrics, and societal well-being, but the lack of consensus in the scientific community on how to best operationalize and measure these perceptions may impede progress on... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Perception; Analysis

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December 2007 (Revised January 2008)
Case

Transforming Arizona's Health Care System: Developing and Implementing the Health-e Connection Roadmap

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Ajay Vinze, T.S. Raghu and Minu Ipe

Addresses the issues of leadership and change management in the process of transforming an industry through an innovative public-private partnership approach to policy making. In 2005, the Governor of Arizona issued an Executive Order to create a roadmap for the state... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Private Sector; Public Sector; Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Partners and Partnerships; Information Technology; Health Industry; Health Industry

01 Nov 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Male Circumcision and AIDS: The Macroeconomic Impact of a Health Crisis

Keywords: by Eric D. Werker, Amrita Ahuja & Brian Wendell

2006
Working Paper

Male Circumcision and AIDS: The Macroeconomic Impact of a Health Crisis

By: Amrita Ahuja, Brian Wendell and Eric D. Werker

Theories abound on the potential macroeconomic impact of AIDS in Africa, yet there have been surprisingly few empirical studies to test the mixed theoretical predictions. In this paper, we examine the impact of the AIDS epidemic on African nations through 2005 using... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Health Disorders; Welfare or Wellbeing; Poverty; Research; Education; Nutrition; Risk Management; Africa

2022
Working Paper

Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups

By: Shai Bernstein, Richard Townsend and Ting Xu

Using proprietary data from AngelList Talent, we study how individuals’ job search and application behavior changed during the COVID-19 downturn. We find that job seekers shifted their searches toward more established firms and away from early-stage startups, even... View Details

Keywords: Startup Labor Market; Flight To Safety; COVID-19; Recession; Business Startups; Human Capital; Business Cycles; Health Pandemics

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