Attachment D -- NGC-NQMC Core Editorial Board

Attachment D -- NGC/NQMC Core Editorial Board

NGC/ NQMC Core Editorial Board

The National Quality Measures Clearinghouse/National Guideline Clearinghouse (NQMC/NGC) Editorial Board is comprised of individuals with collective expertise in quality measures and clinical guidelines. The Editorial Board will provide NQMC and NGC with access to vital knowledge concerning developments in health care that will inform future NQMC and NGC work. The Board will also provide valuable perspective in the form of Expert Commentaries on topics germane to the quality measures and guideline fields.

Editorial Board Co-Chairs

Richard C. Hermann, M.D., M.S.

Dr. Hermann currently serves as the Director of the Center for Quality Assessment & Improvement in Mental Health at the Tufts-New England Medical Center (NEMC) Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies. His major research interests include organizational factors influencing the effectiveness of quality improvement in health care, quality assessment of mental health care and its association with clinical outcomes, and variation and appropriateness of psychiatric practices. He has received over 20 research funding grants, many of which are ongoing. Dr. Hermann has also been the recipient of several awards and distinctions, including the Van Ameringen Foundation/American Psychiatric Association (APA) Health Services Research Scholar Award in 1997-1998.

After graduating cum laude with a B.A. from Dartmouth College, Dr. Hermann obtained his M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School, followed by his M.S. in Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He currently sits on the Committee on Quality Indicators of the APA and the Committee on Psychopathology of the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry. Dr. Hermann is very active in publication efforts. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of the Harvard Review of Psychiatry and Medscape's Psychiatry and Mental Health section, and serves as a reviewer of many other prominent journals. His own publishing credits include numerous refereed papers, book chapters, and editorials. He has extensive teaching experience and is frequently invited to lecture in the U.S. and abroad.

Paul G. Shekelle, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.

In addition to currently serving as a Staff Physician at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Dr. Shekelle has served as the Director of the Southern California Evidence-based Practice Center for the RAND Corporation since 1997. He is also a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine. He is widely recognized in the field of guidelines, quality measurement, and evidence-based medicine. Dr. Shekelle has extensive experience in the health care arena, and was previously the methodologist for the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ]) Low-Back Guidelines Panel and co-chaired the UK-VA collaboration on implementing guidelines in 2003. He is a member of several prominent groups including the Editorial Board, Back Review Group, for the Cochrane Collaboration; the VA Performance Measures Workgroup, Methods Subcommittee; and the RAND project team that is developing a taxonomy for efficiency measures for AHRQ. In addition, Dr. Shekelle holds the position of Associate Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Program, UCLA.

After receiving a B.S. in both Biology and Chemistry at the University of Illinois, Dr. Shekelle earned his M.D. in 1982 from Duke University. He completed his internship, residency, and fellowship at UCLA, where he also obtained his M.P.H. in 1989 and his Ph.D. in 1993. He has been invited to give more than 60 presentations in both the U.S. and abroad and has been the recipient of significant research funding. His published writing is extensive, encompassing over 130 peer-reviewed research papers, as well as numerous RAND Reports, Evidence Reports, book chapters, and abstracts.

Core Editorial Board Members

Ethan Balk, M.D. M.P.H.

Dr. Balk is Associate Director of the Tufts-NEMC Evidence-based Practice Center and Center for Clinical Evidence Synthesis and the Associate Program Director of the National Kidney Foundation Center for Guideline Development and Implementation at Tufts-NEMC. He assists in directing and coordinating multiple projects on systematic review, quality assessment of the medical literature, meta-analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and guideline development. Specific focus areas include Evidence Reports and Technology Assessments for AHRQ and guideline development for the Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative (KDOQI) and Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) guidelines on chronic kidney disease.

After earning a B.A. in Chemistry at Williams College, Dr. Balk began his graduate education at Tufts University, where he subsequently obtained his M.D. in 1991 and later his M.P.H. in 1999. After obtaining his M.D., he remained in Boston to complete his medical residency and clinical care fellowship at Saint Elizabeth's Medical Center and NEMC, respectively. Dr. Balk has written numerous peer-reviewed publications and has significantly contributed to numerous guidelines. He is also an Assistant Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine/Tufts-NEMC.

Jerod M. Loeb, Ph.D.

Dr. Loeb currently serves as the Executive Vice President for Quality Measurement and Research at The Joint Commission, where he has held various leadership roles over the past 14 years. As such, he has administrative responsibility for the Department of Performance Measurement and the Department of Health Services Research. Prior to joining The Joint Commission, Dr. Loeb was Assistant Vice President for Science, Technology, and Public Health at the American Medical Association (AMA) in Chicago, where he also served as secretary of the AMA's council on Scientific Affairs.

Dr. Loeb earned a B.S. in Biology from the College of Staten Island (City University of New York), followed by a Ph.D. in Physiology at the State University of New York - Downstate Medical Center. He has subsequently held fellowship positions at Harvard Medical School - Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Loyola University of Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. He has been a member of the faculty at Northwestern University Fineberg School of Medicine in Chicago in full and adjunct capacities since 1978, receiving tenure in 1985. He remains active in academia as an adjunct professor of Physiology. He currently serves on many committees and boards and acts as a referee for several scientific journals, including JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine. In addition to his extensive writing credits, Dr. Loeb has been the recipient of numerous grant awards and has given more than 250 invited oral presentations in the U.S. and abroad.

Kathleen N. Lohr, Ph.D.

Before becoming a Distinguished Fellow at RTI International in 2003, Dr. Lohr was a Chief Scientist and Senior Program Director for a portfolio of projects in health services and health policy, with emphasis on evidence-based practice. She served as the founding Director of the RTI-University of North Carolina (UNC) Evidence-based Practice Center for 10 years; she continues in the same role for RTI's DEcIDE Center. Dr. Lohr is also the first Editor-in-Chief of RTI Press. She spent 9 years at the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, where she directed the Division of Health Care Services and led or oversaw numerous studies in quality of care, clinical practice guidelines, and other health services and policy research topics. At the RAND Corporation from 1974 to 1987, she was Lead Analyst, Co-principal Investigator, and Project Leader on various health care projects, chiefly RAND's Health Insurance Experiment. Starting in 2002, she held the rank of Research Professor, Department of Health Policy and Administration at the UNC School of Public Health.

Dr. Lohr completed her undergraduate studies with a B.A. (with distinction) in Sociology from Stanford University, where she also earned an M.A. in Education. She continued her graduate work at RAND Graduate School, earning both an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in Policy Analysis and Public Policy Analysis, respectively. Among many honors and distinctions accrued throughout her career, she was awarded the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) Avedis Donabedian Outcomes Research Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005 and the Margaret Elliott Knox Excellence award in 2007 from RTI. In 1996, she held the Spinoza Lectureship at the University of Amsterdam ("Primary Care, Health Professions, and Managed Care"). Her writing credits are extensive: numerous books and monographs, editorials, book reviews, letters to the editor, and more than 120 peer-reviewed journal articles. She has served on various national advisory bodies for the public and private sector, including NQMC.

Mark J. Monteforte, M.D.

Dr. Monteforte joined the ECRI Institute in 1998 as a Research Analyst. His responsibilities included identifying and abstracting relevant data from the published literature and writing comprehensive health technology assessment reports (systematic reviews). Key projects have included "Bariatric Surgery for Morbid Obesity" and "Sentinel Node Biopsy for Staging Breast Cancer." He also developed reports used to support for the National Kidney Foundation's "K/DOQI Clinical Practice Guidelines for Bone Metabolism and Disease in Chronic Kidney Disease." In 2000, Dr. Monteforte became a senior member of the NGC content development team. He provides expert physician-level review to assure that data abstracted from clinical practice guidelines are accurate and clinically appropriate. From 2002 to 2006, he also served in this capacity for the QualityTools project. As Senior Physician Reviewer of Content Development for NQMC since its inception in 2001, he contributes to the development of the structural context and classification schemes of content on the NQMC Web site.

After earning his B.S. in Biology from the University of Scranton, Dr. Monteforte obtained his M.D. from Temple University in 1993. He received residency training in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology. He has evaluated thousands of guidelines, quality measures, and tools for quality improvement from hundreds of organizations. In addition, he serves on ECRI Institute's Human Research Review Board, has participated in the National Center for Independent Medical Review (NCIMR), and was a major contributing author to numerous ECRI Institute technology assessment reports.

Heather Palmer, M.B. B.Ch, S.M.

As Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Palmer's primary areas of research include quality measurement and improvement, evaluation of quality measurement and improvement methods, physician performance, and health care system performance. Projects she has recently been involved with include MAJIC: Making Advances in Avoiding Jaundice in Infant Care, and NQMC, both funded by AHRQ. She and her colleagues developed the Computerized Needs-Oriented Quality Measurement Evaluation System (CONQUEST) for AHRQ.

Dr. Palmer received both her B.A. and M.B. B.Ch (British MD equivalent) from Cambridge University, followed by an S.M. (Master of Science) in Hygiene at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is currently a member of the Executive Committee and the Measures Development, Methodology, and Oversight Advisory Committee of the Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement. Among her many other honors and distinctions, Dr. Palmer was awarded the 7th Annual Avedis Donabedian Award in Quality Improvement by the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association in 2006. Her published writing is extensive and includes numerous peer-reviewed journals, books, and technical manuals. She has substantial teaching experience in the U.S. and abroad and has been awarded significant research funding support.

Eric C. Schneider, M.D., M.Sc.

Dr. Schneider currently serves as an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, as well as Associate/Attending Physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital. His research focuses on measurement of the quality of health care, use of quality measurement in public reporting and financial incentive programs, socio-demographic disparities in care, and the influence of organization and financing of the health care delivery system on the quality of care. He practices primary care medicine at Brigham Internal Medicine Associates, where he also teaches internal medicine, clinical epidemiology, and health policy. At the Harvard School of Public Health, he co-directs a course on quality improvement in health care.

After earning a B.S. in Biology from Columbia University, Dr. Schneider began his graduate work at the University of California, obtaining his M.Sc. at Berkeley, and his M.D. at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 1991. In addition to being an ad-hoc reviewer for prestigious journals including JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Schneider's own writing credits include numerous original articles as well as reviews, book chapters, and editorials. In 2004, 2005, and 2006, he was honored as one of the Top 30% of Reviewers by the Annals of Internal Medicine. He has given countless invited lectures at the regional, national, and international levels and is a member of several prominent professional societies.

Robert Wachter, M.D.

Dr. Robert M. Wachter is a Professor of Medicine and Associate Chairman at the UCSF. His background encompasses substantial knowledge and experience in the health care arena, including serving as Chief of the Medical Service and Founding Chair of the Patient Safety Committee at UCSF Medical Center. Dr. Wachter is the Editor for two AHRQ-sponsored quality and patient safety Web-based initiatives, WebM&M and AHRQ Patient Safety Network. He is also the author of two popular and well reviewed books on patient safety, Internal Bleeding (2004) and Understanding Patient Safety (2008).

Dr. Wachter received both his B.A. in Political Science and M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a resident and chief resident in Internal Medicine at the UCSF, and a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Stanford University. He has earned numerous scholarly awards and recognition for excellence in teaching and was named one of the United States' top 30 most influential physician executives by Modern Physician Magazine in 2005. He currently serves on many committees and boards. His credits include hundreds of invited lectures, media appearances, and visiting professorships. Among his many accomplishments, Dr. Wachter has published 200 articles and six books in the areas of clinical outcomes, medical ethics, health services research, medical education, and health care quality.