Population Health Sciences, UW School of Medicine and Public Health
The Department of Population Health Sciences focuses on the health of populations. Its mission is to create, integrate, disseminate, and apply knowledge promoting the efficient and effective use of resources to maintain and improve the public’s health. A vital part of the department’s mission is the education of graduate students and post-doctoral trainees in research methods to study disease causation and prevention, assessment of medical practice and technology, and the optimal organization and management of health care delivery.

Faculty, staff, and students in Population Health Sciences engage in a wide variety of epidemiological and health services research projects to understand health and health problems in populations. Methods employed include developing and maintaining long term cohort studies, disease registries, population surveys, and retrospective analyses of large observational databases. Researchers in the department also work to advance methodology in population health evaluation, health economics, and statistical analyses, and to integrate and disseminate the results of their research to real-world applications.

Located within the Department is the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. The Institute serves as a focal point for applied public health and health policy within the UW School of Medicine and Public Health as well as a bridge to public health and health policy practitioners in the state of Wisconsin.

School of Social Work
The School of Social Work at UW-Madison prepares social work professionals at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels, and is consistently ranked among the best schools of social work in the country. The School’s faculty seeks to prepare social work practitioners, scholars, and educators to explore and understand the nature of social problems, their impact on vulnerable populations, and ways to critically analyze and promote a just, equitable, productive, and healthy society.

Building on the interdisciplinary nature of social work and social welfare, the School’s faculty carries out research in collaboration with specialized institutes, centers and projects on the UW-Madison campus, and with researchers from other academic institutions. Faculty members have social work practice and research experience across a wide range of social problems, such as child welfare, aging, physical and mental health, developmental disabilities, and poverty and welfare reform. In addition, the school’s faculty seeks to provide national leadership in conducting research relevant to the advancement of social work education and practice and the formulation and evaluation of social policies and programs.

University of Wisconsin Survey Center
The central function of the University of Wisconsin Survey Center (UWSC) is to advance excellence in survey research on the UW-Madison campus by providing survey methods expertise to faculty and staff research projects, and by facilitating and conducting survey research projects. The projects conducted by the UWSC involve virtually all forms of data collection methods, including Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) surveys, mail surveys, Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) surveys, Internet web surveys and focus groups. The UWSC utilizes state-of-the-art interviewing and data processing equipment, and employs a staff of well-trained and highly professional interviewers to produce work of the highest quality. Survey research services offered by the UWSC include research design consultation, questionnaire development, sample design services, data collection, respondent tracking services, data entry, and preparation and documentation of data sets.

The University of California San Diego (UCSD)

Health Outcomes Assessment Program (HOAP)
The Health Outcomes Assessment Program (HOAP) at UCSD is comprised of a multidisciplinary team of quality of life researchers with a common goal of improving the measurement of health outcomes and quality of life. HOAP researchers are involved in both the theoretical development and the practical application of health outcomes assessment. HOAP offers a wide range of research services to academia, corporations, and individuals worldwide, including consultation on project design, forms development, data collection and entry, and data analysis. HOAP is housed within the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at UCSD.

Department of Family and Preventive Medicine
The Department of Family and Preventive Medicine is composed of five divisions: Family Medicine, Health Care Sciences, Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, and International Health and Cross Cultural Medicine. Each division is led by an appointed head, and pursues active investigational and educational interests. The department seeks to train compassionate physicians and physician–scientists who are also highly skilled practitioners, innovators and leaders in primary care medicine and⁄or academia. Close collaboration among the divisions helps assure that the clinicians in the department will be better able to evaluate emerging medical literature critically and stay abreast of the newest developments in prevention. Researchers benefit by this close collaboration by grounding their work in the real world where it is useful to clinicians and, ultimately, patients.

The department is the academic home of a number of world–class health services researchers, epidemiologists and biostatisticians who work independently, and also in collaboration with other department in the USCD School of Medicine. The Division of Health Care Sciences encompasses expertise in the areas of outcome research, biostatistics, health policy, cancer prevention and medical ethics. The Division of Epidemiology demonstrates particular strength in studies of women’s health, geriatrics and the epidemiology of chronic disease.

The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)

Department of Health Services, School of Public Health
A major focus of this department is the examination of the organization, financing, and delivery of services to prevent and treat disease. Faculty members come from diverse fields such as medicine, economics, history, law, management, planning, political science, sociology, and statistics. The common bond among department faculty is a steadfast commitment to solving problems and developing innovations related to the access, cost, and quality of health services from a population-based perspective. Although the department is small, it includes five members of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and two former presidents of the American Public Health Association.

Members of the core faculty regularly collaborate with researchers in the other four departments in the UCLA School of Public Health, as well as faculty in the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, the Jonnson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the UCLA Departments of Economics and Sociology, and the Schools of Management, Law, and Public Policy. Department researchers also regularly collaborate on projects carried out by RAND Corporation.

Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research
Located within the UCLA Department of Medicine, the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research encompasses a group of clinicians, researchers, and educators whose mission is to advance the art and science of health care delivery. Investigators in the Division conduct a wide range of projects aimed at understanding and improving how health care is delivered, focusing on topics such as health care quality and access, patient satisfaction, quality of life outcomes of treatments, and screening and prevention. In addition, the Division sponsors a research seminar series that provides a forum for discussion of cutting-edge health services research. Speakers from many institutions actively discuss work at all stages of development with the goal of educating others in research methods and results that may lead to improving quality of, cost of, and access to health services.