Rockville, Sept. 25, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Veteran health experts Lisanne Brown, Ph.D, Katherine M. Harris, Ph.D and Ann Loeffler have joined Abt Associates as Principal Associates in the Division of Health and Environment.
Brown has more than 20 years of experience in public health evaluation and research and a background in epidemiologic and program evaluation methods. She has worked on numerous evaluation and applied research studies for local, state and federal agencies. Her areas of expertise include maternal and child health, health care access, integration of primary care and behavioral health, social determinants of health and evaluation design, implementation and capacity building. She has published more than 60 articles.
Before joining Abt, she was the Director of the Evaluation and Research Division at the Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI), leading evaluation studies at the nexus of public health, health care and social services in complex systems. In collaboration with other senior LPHI staff, Brown led the development and implementation of disaster response and community resilience projects along the vulnerable Gulf Coast that integrated program implementation with evaluation and research. Results from a recent Health Impact Assessment she led of a planned gas plant in a vulnerable community in New Orleans galvanized community engagement and influenced policy and program action.
Brown holds a Ph.D and M.P.H. from Tulane University’s School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine. She also holds a B.A. in Women's Studies and French from Barnard College.
Harris is a health-services researcher with more than 20 years of experience designing, implementing and evaluating innovative practice and payment models intended to prevent illness and promote access to efficient, high-quality healthcare. She has extensive experience leading multi-disciplinary project teams composed of economists, clinicians, data scientists, epidemiologists, survey researchers and other subject matter experts.
Harris has published more than 100 peer-reviewed monographs, reports and articles in medical, public health and health economics journals. Her work has been cited more than 3,500 times.
Before coming to Abt, Harris served as the principal research scientist at IMPAQ International. She led the development, implementation, maintenance, benchmarking and scoring of a quality measurement set to support the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation’s Comprehensive End-Stage Renal Disease Care Model. It was the nation’s first condition-specific accountable care model. She previously had been a senior economist at RAND Corporation and a senior research scientist at the MedStar Health Research Institute.
Harris holds a Ph.D in Health Services Research, Policy and Administration from the University of Minnesota and an M.A.E. in Applied Economics and an A.B. in Economics from the University of Michigan.
Loeffler has two decades of experience working with community-health, primary-care providers. Trained in epidemiology and biomedical policy, she brings a program perspective, an implementation-science lens and a focus on data analytics to her work. Over the past 10 years, Loeffler has served as a project lead for more than 10 federal projects involving program implementation and evaluation.
Before coming to Abt, she served as Director of the Colorado Health Institute, where she was project lead for several grantee projects funded by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration. Prior to that, she had been a senior consultant at John Snow Inc. on a variety of projects. They ranged from evaluating the impact of value-based care and payment reform to fostering health center growth and development in frontier, rural and urban areas.
Loeffler holds an M.S.P.H. (epidemiology) from the University of Colorado School of Medicine and a B.S. from Kenyon College.
“These three extraordinarily skilled and knowledgeable experts will bolster the already strong talent base in our division,” says Chris Spera, Ph.D, vice president of the Division of Health and Environment. “They will help us bring program beneficiaries the smartest and most effective solutions to their healthcare problems.”
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About Abt Associates
Abt Associates is an engine for social impact, dedicated to moving people from vulnerability to security. Harnessing the power of data and our experts’ insights, we provide research, consulting and technical services globally in the areas of health, environmental and social policy, technology and international development. http://www.abtassociates.com