Second Annual Research Conference Focuses on Public Policy and Medicaid Reform

November 3, 2005 — Public policy and Medicaid reform were key topics at the Second Annual Research Conference in Health and Public Affairs, held Oct. 21 at UCF’s Orlando campus. The day-long event, which featured presentations and commentary by national experts, drew an audience of 110 faculty members, students, practitioners and community members.

The conference began with four morning plenary sessions in the campus’s Live Oak Ballroom. The first speaker, Robert Hurley, associate professor of health administration at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, presented a systematic review of research progress on Medicaid managed care. He strongly advocated the need for promoting more innovations in delivering and managing health services for Medicaid beneficiaries.

Richard Morrison, regional vice president for government and regulatory affairs for the Adventist Health System, responded to Hurley’s presentation by describing a series of new research directives. These included system-level improvement, outcomes enhancement, information sharing at the grass-roots level and exploration of behavioral factors associated with racial and ethnic disparities in health care.

Joan Alker, senior researcher at the Georgetown Health Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., spoke in detail about the cost implications of Florida’s Medicaid Waiver and the impacts of Medicaid policy reform. Coincidentally, her views on Medicaid Waiver appeared that morning in a front-page article in The New York Times. Professor Carol Weissert, the Leroy Collins Eminent Scholar Chair at the Florida State University in Tallahassee and co-editor of Publis, offered insightful analysis of public policy issues on Medicaid.

Paul Duncan, chair and professor of health services research, management and policy at the University of Florida in Gainesville, presented the trends and patterns of disparities in health insurance coverage of Floridians. He reported that uninsurance has increased from 16.8 percent in 1999 to 19.2 percent in 2004.

Karen Van Caulil, a recent graduate of UCF’s Doctoral Program in Public Affairs and director of the Winter Park–based Health Council of East Central Florida, responded to Duncan’s presentation by urging the public to develop collaborative efforts in reducing the insurance disparities.

During the fifth and final plenary session, held after lunch, K. Michael Reynolds, associate professor of criminal justice, outlined the development of the Florida Integrated Network for Data Exchange and Retrieval (FINDER) at UCF. This distributive data-sharing system is a model for information sharing in law enforcement.

State Rep. Dean Cannon followed Reynolds’ presentation by identifying 10 criteria for successful new policy. He said it should: 1) have a simple story; 2) demonstrate quick results; 3) have no entrenched opposition; 4) be comparatively inexpensive and efficient; 5) involve users in its design and formation; 6) avoid legislative mandate; 7) have low entry cost; 8) have a reasonable return on investment; 9) adhere to the emerging best practices; and 10) have measurable outcomes and value metrics.

Two concurrent sessions, one focusing on health and the other on public affairs, were also held in the afternoon. Speaking at these sessions were faculty members and doctoral students from the College of Health and Public Affairs and scholars from other institutions.

The concurrent sessions were followed by 15 research poster presentations in the Health and Public Affairs I atrium. A panel of three faculty reviewers selected presentations by Shriram Marathe, Diane Andrews and Dianne Ross to receive outstanding awards.

— Thomas T. H. Wan and Karen Guin

Click here for a list of speakers, concurrent sessions’ papers and award-winning posters.