Separated at Birth: Statisticians, Social Scientists and Causality in Health Services Research

Bryan Dowd
Division of Health Policy and Management
University of Minnesota

Wednesday, October 21, 2009
3:30pm
Weaver-Densford Hall 2-120
Minneapolis Campus

Abstract:

Health services research is a field of study that brings together experts from a wide variety of academic disciplines. It also is a field that places a high priority on empirical analysis. Many of the questions posed by health services researchers involve the effects of treatments on health outcomes and the effects of policy interventions on access to care and the quality and cost of care. These are questions of causality. Yet many, perhaps most, health services researchers have been trained in disciplines that are reluctant to use the language of causality, and the approaches to causal questions are discipline-specific, often with little overlap among departments. How did this situation arise? This paper traces the roots of the division in an attempt to open new lines of communications between the disciplines.

All are Welcome.
For more details contact 612-624-4655 or see http://www.biostat.umn.edu/seminar_academic.html