Dennis G. Fryback, Ph.D., is the principal investigator for the overall research program and the project leader for National Health Measurement Study.

Dr. Fryback received his doctoral degree in Mathematical Psychology from the University of Michigan, where he trained in human decision making and decision analysis. Dr. Fryback is Professor of Population Health Sciences and Industrial Engineering at the University of Wisconsin. He also serves as the program director for a doctoral training grant in population-based health services research at the University of Wisconsin.

His research and teaching interests include medical technology assessment, health care cost-effectiveness analysis, measurement of population-level health status, and health-related quality of life measurement. Dr. Fryback is a founding member of the Society for Medical Decision Making, and has served as the society’s president and as Editor-in-Chief of Medical Decision Making. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, a fellow of the Association of Health Services Research, and serves on the editorial boards of Health Services Research and Outcomes Research Methodology. He has also served on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Summarizing Population Health, the National Advisory Council for Health Care Policy, Research, and Evaluation, and the National Advisory Board for the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Fryback has also served as Special Expert at the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications of the National Library of Medicine.

Ted Ganiats, M.D., is the project leader for the project entitled Symptom Duration and Health-related Quality of Life Assessment in this research program.

Dr. Ganiats received both his medical school and family medicine residency training at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Ganiats is a Professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Family and Preventive Services in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. He also is the Executive Director of the UCSD Health Outcomes Assessment Program (HOAP).

Dr. Ganiats is a practicing family physician. His academic work in outcomes research includes both the practical and the theoretical, with a special interest in how outcomes research is translated into the clinical setting. His other research interests include quality of life assessment and cost-effectiveness analysis. He has participated in over 20 national guidelines panels in a variety of disciplines. Dr. Ganiats is a member of both the Commission on Clinical Policies and Research for the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Council of Medical Specialty Societies Health Outcomes Task Force. He has served on the Board of Trustees for the Society for Medical Decision Making and as the Chair of the American Academy of Family Physicians Task Force on Outcome Measures and Systems for Family Medicine and Primary Care.

Ron Hays, Ph.D., is the project leader for the project entitled Health Measurement in Patients: Does Measurement Method Make a Difference? in this research program.

Dr. Hays received his doctoral degree in Psychology from the University of California, Riverside. He is a Professor in the Department of Medicine and the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Hays is also a Senior Health Scientist with RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California.

Dr. Hays’ research and teaching interests include health-related quality of life, patient evaluations of health care, and health-related behavior. He is the Principal Investigator of the Consumer Assessment of Health Plans Study (CAHPS) and several studies of health-related quality of life. Dr. Hays has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Compliance in Health Care and Quality of Life Research, and as the Deputy Editor of Medical Care. He is currently on the editorial advisory board of Clinical Therapeutics and will become the Editor-in-Chief of Quality of Life Research later this year. Hays also serves on the Medicare Health Outcomes Study Technical Expert Panel. In addition, he is the chair of the 2005 International Society for Quality of Life Research annual meeting that will be held October 19-22 in San Francisco.

Robert Kaplan, Ph.D., is the project leader for the project entitled Health Measurement in Patients: Tracking Clinical Outcomes in this research program.

Dr. Kaplan received his doctoral degree in Psychology from the University of California, Riverside. He is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Services in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Kaplan’s research interests include quality of life assessment, behavioral medicine, health outcome measurement, and psychometrics. He is a past President of the American Psychological Association Division of Health Psychology, the International Society for Quality of Life Research, the Society for Behavioral Medicine, the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, and the Behavioral Science Council of the American Thoracic Society. Dr. Kaplan is the Editor-in-Chief of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine and Health Psychology, the Associate Editor of the American Psychologist, and Consulting Editor of four other academic journals. He has served as co-chair of the Behavioral Committee for the NIH Women’s Health Initiative, as a member of both the NHLBI Behavioral Medicine Task Force and the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Health and Behavior, and on an expert advisory policy panel for the CDC-NIH Public Action Plan to Prevent Heart Disease and Stroke. Dr. Kaplan currently serves on the National Advisory Committee for the Decade of Behavior, and as the chair of the Cost and Effectiveness Committee for the NHLBI National Emphysema Treatment Trial.

Mari Palta, Ph.D., is the leader of the Statistical Core of this research program.

Dr. Palta received her doctoral degree in Biostatistics from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. She is a Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences and in Biostatistics and Medical Informatics at the University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Palta’s research interests and areas of specialization include statistical methods for epidemiology and longitudinal studies, with a particular emphasis on methods for analyzing longitudinal data with missing or unknown predictors, selection bias, and measurement error. She is currently the Principal Investigator of a cohort study of very low birth weight infants, and of a study of cardiovascular disease in Type I Diabetes. Dr. Palta is the author of a recent book, Quantitative Methods in Population Health. She is also an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and has served as President of the Caucus of Women in Statistics.

Collaborators and Consultants

David Feeny, Ph.D., serves as a collaborating consultant for the overall research program.

Dr. Feeny received his doctoral degree in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was recently appointed as Senior Investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Northwest Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon, and is also a Professor of Economics and Public Health Sciences at the University of Alberta and Fellow of the Institute of Health Economics, Edmonton, Alberta.

Dr. Feeny has collaborated with colleagues at Health Utilities, Inc. in the development of the HUI Mark 2 and Mark 3, multi-attribute health status classification systems developed to provide comprehensive but compact systems capable of capturing both multiple sequelae and varying degrees of severity of health impairments. The seven attribute HUI2 system was developed for clinical use and was then adapted for the assessment of population health status. The eight attribute HUI3 system was developed for the 1990 Ontario Health Survey and has also been used in the 1991 Statistics Canada General Society Survey, the 1994 (and ongoing) National Population Health Survey, the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, and the Canadian Community Health Survey (launched in the fall of 2001).

Dr. Feeny serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care and Medical Decision Making, and is an associate editor of Quality of Life Research. He has also has served as a consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Health, Health Protection Branch of the federal government of Canada, World Bank, Canadian International Development Agency, and Agency for International Development. He has been a member of a panel of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Canadian Coordinating Office for Health Technology Assessment. Dr. Feeny has also served as President of the International Society for Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL).

Paul Kind, MPhil., serves as a collaborating consultant for the overall research program.

Neal P. Barney, M.D., is a clinical co-investigator for the project entitled Health Measurement in Patients: Tracking Clinical Outcomes in this research program.

Dr. Barney received his medical school training at Wright State University, his residency training at the Kresge Eye Institute of Wayne State University, and completed fellowships in ocular immunology at the Schepens Eye Research Institute and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Barney is also the Program Director of the Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences residency training program at UW Health. He also is director of the Cornea and External Disease fellowship training program and serves as Medical Director of the Lions Eye Bank of Wisconsin.

To date, Dr. Barney’s research has focused on allergic eye disease. His Ocular Allergy Lab investigates the mediator-driven cell-to-cell activation occurring on the ocular surface undergoing an allergic reaction. Funding for the lab has come from the National Eye Institute since 1998. Dr. Barney also serves on the editorial board of the journal, Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences.

Nancy Cross Dunham, Ph.D., is the research program manager for this research program, a co-investigator for the project entitled the National Health Measurement Study, and the data quality control coordinator for all projects.

Dr. Dunham received her doctoral degree in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, with an emphasis on medical sociology, complex organizations and health policy. She is employed as a Research Program Manager in the Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Dunham’s research interests have focused on patterns of care and outcomes among older adults, access to care for vulnerable populations, and health care policy. Dr. Dunham has specialized in the start-up and operation of a number of health policy research centers at the University of Wisconsin and New York University, and has directed survey research and health care data collection activities in hospitals and other community-based settings. In the private sector, Dr. Dunham has also been Vice President for Operations/Director of Research for a company providing software, consulting and evaluation services to children’s mental health systems of care. Among other activities, she has been a research consultant to an Institute of Medicine study group on health services research workforce development, a member of a special study committee on state health care information for the Wisconsin Legislative Council, and a reviewer for JAMA, Medical Care and Health Affairs.

Stephanie A. Robert, Ph.D., is a co-investigator for the project entitled the National Health Measurement Study in this research program.

Dr. Robert received her doctoral degree in Sociology and Social Work at the University of Michigan. She is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Robert is also co-director of the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Robert’s research and professional specialties include the social determinants of health, aging and health, socioeconomic status and health over the life course, and long-term care policies. She is currently conducting a study funded by the National Institute on Aging that focuses on the relationship between health over the lifespan and socioeconomic status, race, and community context. She is also conducting research on a community-based long-term care pilot program in Wisconsin called "Family Care," and is examining trends in income inequality’s effect on health through a Russell Sage Foundation initiative.

Sherrill Sellers, Ph.D., is a co-investigator for the project entitled the National Health Measurement Study in this research program.

Dr. Sellers received her doctoral degree in Sociology and Social Work at the University of Michigan. She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin and an Adjunct Faculty Associate in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Sellers’ research career has focused on how, and under what conditions, race and gender independently and interactively connect to produce differences in physical and mental health outcomes. Under this broad umbrella, she has studied the extent to which goal-striving and social inequality influence health outcomes, and the relationship of race, class and gender to mental health. Dr. Sellers was recently elected to the Medical Sociology section of the American Sociological Association. She has authored numerous articles and book chapters on social and cultural factors that affect the physical and mental health of racial minorities, and is currently editing a volume, with collaborators at the University of Michigan, entitled Research Methodology in African American Communities .

Nancy Sweitzer, M.D., Ph.D., is a clinical co-investigator for the project entitled Health Measurement in Patients: Tracking Clinical Outcomes in this research program.

Dr. Sweitzer received both her medical degree and a doctorate in Physiology from the University of Wisconsin. She completed residency training in Internal Medicine, and fellowships in cardiology, heart failure, and cardiac transplantation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sweitzer is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin.

As director of the UW Health Heart Failure Program, Dr. Sweitzer is involved in several multi-center trials of therapy and interventions in heart failure. As a clinician-scientist, her research focuses on the physiology of heart failure, abnormalities of the cardiovascular system associated with aging, non-invasive assessment of age-related pathology, and targeted interventions aimed at slowing the vascular stiffening seen with age, hypertension, diabetes and obesity. Dr. Sweitzer is also involved in medical student and graduate-level teaching, and was awarded a Harvard Medical School teaching award for Best Lecturer in Integrated Human Physiology in 2001.

Steven R. Tally, Ph.D., is the project manager for the project entitled Health Measurement in Patients: Tracking Clinical Outcomes in this research program.

Dr. Tally received his doctoral degree in Human Development at the University of California, Irvine, and his M.A. in Experimental Psychology from San Diego State University. He is currently employed as a project manager in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. Tally’s interests and areas of specialization include cross-cultural differences in socio-emotional states, instrument and scale validation, and health care utilization in elderly populations. Dr. Tally has previously worked as a statistical and methodological consultant in the private sector and served as research director and senior statistician for a national survey research firm.