Think Tanked

Personnel Files: RAND Names New Head of Transportation, Space & Technology

The RAND Corporation has named Johanna Zmud as the director of the RAND Transportation, Space and Technology Program, according to a release today.  

From the release:

"Johanna Zmud's vision, experience, and energy will help expand RAND's reach and help us improve transportation, space, and technology policy in the United States and around the world," said Debra Knopman, vice president of the RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment division, which includes the Transportation, Space, and Technology program.

Zmud has 25 years of experience measuring and analyzing travel behavior. She has international credentials in travel behavior survey science and national credentials in passenger travel and road pricing, freight and commodity flows, transportation data programs, and the intersection of transportation and information/communication technologies.

Zmud is the incoming chair of the Policy and Organization Group of the National Academies' Transportation Research Board and currently serves as co-chair of the Board's Special Task Force on Data for Decisions and Performance Measures. Prior to joining RAND as a senior policy researcher in August 2010, she was founding owner and president of NuStats, a company specializing in complex social research studies of transportation, mobility, and other quality-of-life issues.

Zmud succeeds Martin Wachs, who will continue part-time as a RAND researcher and will teach at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.

RAND's Natalie Crawford Receives Aerospace Honor

RAND Senior Fellow Natalie Crawford has been named a 2011 Fellow by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and will be honored at the AIAA Aerospace Spotlight Awards Gala in May at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.

From the release:

The distinction of Fellow is conferred by AIAA upon outstanding members of the Institute who have made notable and valuable contributions to the arts, sciences, or technology of aeronautics or astronautics. Being named a Fellow of AIAA is among the highest honors that can be bestowed upon an aerospace professional, and represents recognition from colleagues and peers for great contributions to our field and technical community.

According to Crawford's RAND bio, she previously served as vice president and director of RAND Project AIR FORCE from 1997 to 2006. In 2006, she received the OSD Medal for Exceptional Public Service and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Defense Industrial Association's Combat Survivability Division. In 2003, she received the Air Force Analytic Community's Lifetime Achievement Award and the Vance R. Wanner Memorial Award from the Military Operations Research Society.

RAND: Electronic Medical Records Not Always Linked to Better Care in Hospitals

According to a new RAND study, the implementation of electronic health records in the U.S. has thus far only had a limited effect on improving the quality of health care--and has variation across patient illness.

The study (the first of its kind), spanning from 2003-2007 and surveying more than 2,000 hospitals, was supported by RAND COMPARE (Comprehensive Assessment of Reform Efforts), funded by a consortium of individuals, corporations, corporate foundations, private foundations and health system stakeholders.

From the release:

Studying a wide mix of hospitals nationally, researchers found that hospitals with basic electronic health records demonstrated a significantly higher increase in quality of care for patients being treated for heart failure.

However, similar gains were not noted among hospitals that upgraded to advanced electronic health records, and hospitals with electronic health records did not have higher quality care among patients treated for heart attack or pneumonia.

The findings, published online by the American Journal of Managed Care, are part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that new methods should be developed to measure the impact of health information technology on the quality of hospital care.

"The lurking question has been whether we are examining the right measures to truly test the effectiveness of health information technology," said Spencer S. Jones, the study's lead author and an information scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "Our existing tools are probably not the ones we need going forward to adequately track the nation's investment in health information technology."

Use of electronic health records is growing rapidly among U.S. hospitals, spurred by a major federal investment in the technology. Legislation approved in 2009 may eventually provide as much as $30 billion in federal aid to hospitals that invest in electronic health records.

One expected benefit of electronic health records is improved quality of care. But most of the current knowledge about the relationship between health information technology and quality comes from a few hospitals that may not be representative, such as large teaching hospitals or hospitals that were among the first to adopt electronic health records.

[...]

The number of hospitals using either a basic or advanced electronic health records rose sharply during the period, from 24 percent in 2003 to nearly 38 percent in 2006.

Researchers found that the quality of care provided for the three illnesses generally improved among all types of hospitals studied from 2004 to 2007. The largest increase in quality was seen among patients treated for heart failure at hospitals that maintained basic electronic health records throughout the study period.

However, quality scores improved no faster at hospitals that had newly adopted a basic electronic health record than in hospitals that did not adopt the technology. In addition, at hospitals with newly adopted advanced electronic health records, quality scores for heart attack and heart failure improved significantly less than at hospitals that did not have electronic health records. Electronic health records had no impact on the quality of care for patients treated for pneumonia.

Researchers say the mixed results may be attributable to the complex nature of health care. Focusing attention on adopting electronic health records may divert staff from focusing on other quality improvement efforts. In addition, performance on existing hospital quality measures may be reaching a ceiling where further improvements in quality are unlikely.

New performance measures that focus on areas where electronic health records are expected to improve care should be developed and tested, according to researchers. For example, electronic health records are expected to lower the risk of adverse drug interactions, but existing quality measures do not examine the issue.

"With the federal government making such a large investment in this technology, we need to develop a new set of quality measures that can be used to establish the impact of electronic health records on quality," Jones said.

Download "Electronic Health Record Adoption and Quality Improvement in US Hospitals" at The American Journal of Managed Care.

RAND Opens Office in Abu Dhabi

In a release from today, the RAND Corporation announced it has opened a new office in Abu Dhabi.

From the release:

The RAND Corporation has opened a new office in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates, as part of a strategic effort to deliver research and analysis to decisionmakers in the Middle East, RAND President and CEO James A. Thomson announced today.

"This new office will bring the experience and expertise of nearly 800 RAND researchers and 400 affiliated analysts to the issues of concern in the United Arab Emirates," Thomson said. "We are excited to be expanding RAND's global presence and impact."

In February, RAND entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Centre of Excellence for Applied Research & Training (CERT) in Abu Dhabi, to help RAND establish a presence in the United Arab Emirates and to begin helping governments and industry sectors in the United Arab Emirates to address a broad range of policy issues. The agreement was signed under the patronage of His Excellency Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, minister of higher education and scientific research, chairman of CERT and chancellor of the Higher Colleges of Technology.

[...]

"We are pleased to have RAND with us at the CERT Technology Park," said Dr. Tayeb Kamali, vice chancellor of the Higher Colleges of Technology and Group CEO of CERT. "I am confident that having the expertise and experience of RAND will help public institutions in the United Arab Emirates develop better public policy in all key sectors vital to the economy and prosperity of the country."

"There is no substitute for having RAND researchers living and working in the region," Rich said. "Having an office in Abu Dhabi will allow us to partner more effectively with CERT and, in the end, produce better analyses and policy recommendations for the United Arab Emirates."

RAND: Deradicalizing Extremists Needs More Attention

The RAND Corporation announced today the release of "Deradicalizing Islamist Extremists," a new study by the think tank. The study shows that it's not enough to get extremists to disengage from terrorist activity and that the deradicalization process needs more emphasis for succesful anti-terrorism results.

From the release:

"Getting militants to refrain from violence is only part of the process," said Angel Rabasa, lead author of the study and a senior political scientist with RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "Ideally, the goal is to get the individual to change his belief system, reject the extremist ideology and embrace a moderate worldview. This is difficult with Islamist extremists, because the requirements of the ideology are regarded as religious obligations."

But deradicalization may be necessary to permanently defuse the threat posed by these groups, Rabasa said. If a militant agrees to stop fighting purely for practical reasons—such as a condition for one's release from prison—when the circumstances change, the person may once again return to terrorist acts.

The RAND study indentifies and analyzes the processes through which militants leave Islamist extreme groups, assesses the effectiveness of deradicalization programs and summarizes the policies that could help to promote and accelerate the processes of deradicalization.

The best-designed deradicalization and counter-radicalization programs in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe leverage local cultural patterns to achieve their objectives, Rabasa said. For that reason, these programs cannot simply be transplanted from one country to another.

Deradicalization programs have two other important goals. One is to obtain intelligence on extremist organizations and the second is to discredit the extremist ideology. Challenging the extremist ideology with an alternative interpretation of Islam is not only likely to effect a more permanent change in the militant's worldview and to reduce the risk of recidivism, but it also helps to weaken the appeal of radical Islamism. An important indicator of success is convincing rehabilitated militants to speak out against extremist groups and ideology.

Because counter-radicalization or deradicalization programs are embedded in a war of ideas, the counter-ideological component of these programs is extremely important. Most Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian programs use a form of theological dialogue in which mainstream scholars and sometimes even former radicals engage extremists in discussions of Islamic theology in an effort to convince the militants that their interpretation of Islam is wrong.

However, because many of these programs are focused on eliminating the domestic terrorism threat, they may forbid terrorism in the home state because the government is Islamic, but condone it elsewhere.

[...]

The research was conducted within the International Security and Defense Policy Center of the RAND National Security Research Division. The division conducts research and analysis on defense and national security topics for the U.S. and allied defense, foreign policy, homeland security and intelligence communities, and foundations and other non-governmental organizations that support defense and national security analysis.

Download "Deradicalizing Islamist Extremists" at RAND. 

Personnel Files: RAND Names Art Kellermann as New Director Of Health Division

The RAND Corporation has named leading public health expert, Dr. Arthur Kellermann, as the new head of the health research division at RAND. On January 1, 2011, Kellermann will assume his duties as director and vice president of RAND Health, following Dr. Robert Brook's return to full-time research.

From the release:

"RAND Health has established a reputation for working at the cutting edge of important policy health and health care questions facing the United States and communities around the world, and Art Kellermann is the leader who can and will ensure RAND Health continues to take on the most challenging issues with objectivity and rigor," Thomson said. "We look forward to the many contributions that RAND Health will make to the well-being of our communities under his direction."

Kellermann joined RAND a year ago after being appointed to the Paul O'Neill Alcoa Professorship in Policy Analysis. Previously he served as a professor of emergency medicine at Emory University and as the medical school's first associate dean for health policy.

"I am truly honored to succeed Robert Brook, who is a legendary figure in the study of medical quality. Bob has helped train thousands of researchers, including me," Kellermann said. "I look forward to building on the accomplishments of RAND Health and leading a team of highly talented and dedicated researchers."

RAND Health was founded more than 40 years ago and accounts for about one-quarter of the organization's research funding. Kellermann said he expects RAND Health to expand its already broad policy agenda, with an increased emphasis on projects directed at identifying ways to promote quality while controlling the rise of health care costs.

"The rising cost of health care threatens to crush our nation's economy and leave us unable to compete economically on the world stage," Kellermann said. "RAND Health can become a major contributor in understanding how to control costs, while making sure that Americans get the health care they need."

Kellermann was founding chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta and founding director of the Center for Injury Control at Emory's Rollins School of Public Health, a collaborating center for injury and violence prevention of the World Health Organization.

He has published research articles on many aspects of emergency cardiac care, emergency health services, injury prevention, and health care for the uninsured. Kellermann also has conducted important research on the epidemiology and prevention of injuries due to violence. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine.

In his new role, Kellermann will be based at RAND's Santa Monica office. Brook will serve as a senior advisor at RAND and will continue to hold the RAND Distinguished Chair in Health Care Services. Brook also is a professor of medicine and health services at the UCLA Center for the Health Sciences, and serves as co-director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at UCLA.

Personnel Files: Schroeder to VP & Gen. Counsel at RAND

From the release:

Debra Schroeder has been appointed to the newly created position of vice president and general counsel of the RAND Corporation, organization officials announced today.

"Debra Schroeder's broad experience as a corporate counsel will help advance RAND's research agenda, and she will provide important leadership on many other issues we take on as a nonprofit organization providing research and analysis to decisionmakers around the world," said RAND President and CEO said James A. Thomson. RAND is a nonprofit research organization.

Schroeder, who served as senior counsel at the Aerospace Corporation before joining RAND, has special expertise in the areas of labor and employment, intellectual property, health care, risk management, and compliance and training. Schroeder's experience also includes time spent with private law firms, as deputy general counsel of a medical and dental financial services and consulting firm, as corporate counsel and director of risk management at Parkview Health, the largest health care delivery system in northeastern Indiana, and as manager of industrial relations with the Essex Group of manufacturing concerns.

Schroeder also will serve as RAND's corporate ethics officer, overseeing the corporate integrity program.

Schroeder earned her law degree from Indiana University, Bloomington.

Adm. Thad Allen Starts at RAND

The RAND Corporation has announced that Adm. Thad Allen, following his service as national incident commander of the BP disaster, will join RAND as a senior fellow. Today is Allen's first day at RAND.

From a RAND release:

“Thad Allen has served the U.S. government and U.S. Coast Guard with great distinction,” said RAND President and CEO James A. Thomson. “We are delighted he will continue to take on the most difficult policy challenges as a RAND senior fellow. His experience and expertise will be apparent in our research and analysis on an array of homeland security, environmental and national security challenges.”

Allen was scheduled to join RAND in May 2010, shortly after he retired as commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. But his transition was delayed when he was asked by President Obama to manage the oil spill emergency response and clean-up, for which his leadership has been widely praised.

Allen became the 23rd commandant of the United States Coast Guard in May of 2006 and led a massive effort to update the service's antiquated command and logistics organizations, and address future maritime challenges facing the nation.

While serving as the Coast Guard's chief of staff, Allen served as the principal federal official overseeing Hurricane Katrina response and recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast region. During his Coast Guard career, Allen held many command posts, including command of the Coast Guard's Atlantic forces in its response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Allen received his bachelor's degree from the United States Coast Guard Academy, a master of public administration from George Washington University and a master's degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. He is the recipient of two Homeland Security Distinguished Service Medals, the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, three Coast Guard Distinguished Service Medals, a Legion of Merit Medal and three Meritorious Service Medals.

Allen will be based in the RAND office in Arlington, Va., and will focus his work on homeland security, ocean policy and defense policy issues.

His work at RAND initially will be concentrated in the RAND Homeland Security and Defense Center, a joint center of the RAND National Security Research Division and RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment. The center conducts analysis to prepare and protect communities and critical infrastructure from natural disasters and terrorism. Center projects examine a wide range of risk management problems including coastal and border security, emergency preparedness and response, defense support to civil authorities, transportation security, domestic intelligence programs, technology acquisition and related topics.

RAND Ranked as One of LA's Best Places to Work

Think tanks are often great places to work--especially in the summer time when many think tankers have a four-day work week. Salaries aren't too bad either--of course, you have to get to the top first. 

But, today, the Rand Corporation is being recognized for being one of the best places to work in Los Angeles.

From a RAND release:

The RAND Corporation was selected as one of the "Best Places to Work in Los Angeles" for 2010 by the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Best Companies Group. RAND's selection was based on a high degree of employee engagement and satisfaction, and positive appraisal of RAND's overall employee experience, including organizational culture, benefits, policies, and practices.

RAND was selected in 2007 as a "great place to work" in Washington, D.C., by Washingtonian magazine, and also received honorable mention in the 2009 program. Similarly, in 2004, RAND was selected as one of the best places to work in Pittsburgh by The Pittsburgh Business Times. This is the first year that RAND submitted an entry to a best places to work program for Los Angeles.

The Best Places to Work in Los Angeles selection process was managed by Best Companies Group, an independent research firm specializing in identifying and recognizing great places to work throughout the United States and Canada. The first part of the assessment process, worth 25 percent of the total score, involved an evaluation of materials submitted by the employer applicants describing the organization's benefits, policies, practices, and other general information. The second part of the appraisal, worth 75 percent of the total score, consisted of an employee engagement and satisfaction survey used to measure the employee's experience and the organizational culture. The Best Places to Work in Los Angeles randomly selected 350 of RAND's regular full-time and part-time staff based out of RAND's Santa Monica headquarters campus to participate in the survey.

The Best Places to Work in Los Angeles program is a county-wide effort designed to identify, recognize, and honor the best places of employment in Los Angeles. A complete listing of the firms honored by the Best Places to Work in Los Angeles Program can be found at bestplacestoworkla.com. RAND was ranked third among the eleven large organizations honored; large organizations included those with over 250 employees.

RAND Study Rates 20 Counterinsurgency Strategies

According to a RAND Corporation release today, a major new, 178-page study rates the performance of 20 distinct approaches to counterinsurgency operations against 30 recent insurgencies around the globe between 1978 and 2008.

The project was sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Cost Analysis and Program Evaluation, Irregular Warfare Division.

From the release:

"Too much of the current debate on counterinsurgency relies on one or two arbitrarily selected cases or a general sense of history," said Christopher Paul, lead author of the study and a social scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "This study used 30 systematically selected and analyzed cases to reach some findings that support the conventional wisdom, and some that are more surprising."

For example, winning a counterinsurgency campaign doesn't hinge on a single factor. The armed forces that succeed in counterinsurgency operations typically implement a host of identified good counterinsurgency practices while avoiding ineffective ones. More surprising, however, is that this finding holds across all 30 cases studied.

Every counterinsurgency "win"—eight out of 30 cases—had a strongly positive balance of successfully implemented good versus detrimental factors and every counterinsurgency loss had a zero or negative balance of good versus detrimental factors. Researchers say this suggests that while every insurgency may be unique in its specific context and local conditions, the kinds of things that counterinsurgents should be trying to do are consistent across cases.

Of the 20 counterinsurgency approaches tested, 13 received strong empirical support, while three approaches—resettlement, escalating repression and various insurgent support strategies—have the weight of evidence against them. Some of the counterinsurgency approaches validated by this study include those advocated in Army Field Manual 3-24 (Counterinsurgency). Those strategies include what would now be called strategic communication and several classic approaches to counterinsurgency, including pacification and legitimacy.

While some repressive counterinsurgency forces have managed to prevail, the study found that repression is a bad counterinsurgency practice. Only two of eight winning counterinsurgency campaigns (those in Turkey and Croatia) used escalating repression and collective punishment during the decisive phase of the conflict. However, in those two cases the counterinsurgents simultaneously employed a much larger number of good counterinsurgency practices.

Repression was shown to win intermediate phases, but a substantial majority of phases in which the counterinsurgents seized the upper hand through repression preceded an ultimate defeat, including insurgencies in Somalia, Burundi, Tajikistan and Kosovo.

Popular support was found to be an important contributor to insurgency outcomes. However, tangible support—the ability of insurgents to replenish and obtain personnel, materiel financing, intelligence and sanctuary—was found to be even more important than popular support.

While popular support and tangible support often followed each other in the cases studied —if the insurgents had the support of the population, they were able to meet their tangible support needs; if they lacked popular support, they were not—when popular support and tangible support diverged, victory followed tangible support. Because of this, the study recommends counterinsurgents identify the specific tangible support needs and sources of insurgents and target them in addition to wooing the population in the area of conflict.

The study recommends that counterinsurgency operations should plan to pursue multiple, mutually supporting lines of operation, and build and maintain forces capable of engaging in multifaceted operations.

Several of the good counterinsurgency practices depend on the nature and behavior of the host nation government, so if a government or its structure or policies do not conform with good counterinsurgency practices, improvement should be a top priority. Also, the United States "should think twice before choosing to support governments that will not help themselves," Paul said.

While there is no hard and fast threshold for the minimum number of good counterinsurgency practices a force must use in order to win, counterinsurgents should keep a scorecard of good versus bad factors and practices. If the balance of good and bad factors is not positive, that suggests counterinsurgents should adjust strategies or make changes in their implementation or execution.