Duke University, the Sanford School of Public Policy, and Duke-Margolis welcomes Kate Bundorf, MBA, PhD as the S. Malcolm Gillis Distinguished Professor of Public Policy. A Core Faculty Member of Duke-Margolis, Kate is a health economist and researcher focused on health policy and the economics of health care systems. She has studied public and private health insurance markets, the organization of health care providers, and consumer decision making in health care. In an interview with Sanford School of Public Policy, Kate said, “A big draw for me to come here was the Margolis Center. The folks at Margolis are really at the cutting edge of so many important health policy issues. The opportunity to be in a top-tier research institution but to also work with colleagues who have deep health policy expertise and strong ties to federal, state and local health policy communities is unparalleled.” Read more about Kate here. 

Duke undergraduate and 2020 Margolis Summer Intern James Zheng earned third place in the highly competitive Duke 2021 Undergraduate Student Research Poster Competition. His poster, “Patient-Oriented Payment Reform: A Novel Approach to Innovating Social Determinants of Health,” summarized his work with his Center mentors, Managing Associates Will Bleser and Rebecca Whittaker and Research Assistant Hannah Crook. “It wouldn’t have been possible without your mentorship and support,” James noted.

Click Here to hear James explain his award-winning poster.

HEALTH POLICY IN ACTION

Duke-Margolis continues to inform testing strategies and monitor allocation and access challenges for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments as well as variants to the virus.

Director Mark McClellan discussed the slower-than-expected vaccination rates so far -- and what to expect in the early weeks of the Biden Administration at Duke media briefing. View it here.

Former FDA commissioners Mark McClellan and Robert Califf co-authored with Chief of Staff Morgan Romine, a new Duke-Margolis issue brief that provides an update on the clinical evidence of antibody treatment for COVID-19, including the updates issued by Eli Lilly and Regeneron. The brief provides an approach to building on current treatment evidence, even as genetic variants to the coronavirus emerge, and outlines a basic approach for efficiently treating patients with the antibody supply available, maximizing the impact of that supply, and generating further evidence to inform its future use. 

Duke-Margolis Core Faculty Member Courtney Van Houtven is the lead author on a new publication and policy brief, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, that provides COVID-19 testing guidance that aims to protect seniors and people living with disabilities who reside in non-federally regulated nursing homes and other congregate living facilities, such as assisted living and memory care. “Even with the vaccine roll out occurring for priority groups, testing will remain an important strategy for reducing risk in congregate care throughout 2021,” said Courtney, who is also a professor at Professor Duke Department of Population Health and the Veterans Affairs Health Care System. “Screening and surveillance test protocols can help reduce the risk of infection and mortality in CCFs.” Joining her on the paper are Duke-Margolis co-authors Research Associate David Anderson, Research Assistants Mira Gill and Anna M. Zavodszky, Policy Fellow Christina Silcox, and Center Director Mark McClellan

Managing Associate Christina Silcox spoke to NPR about COVID-19 testing and the stock supply considerations that the Biden administration will be facing.

Visiting Senior Policy Fellow Hemi Tewarson joined the Change Healthcare podcast to discuss vaccine rollout, equity of vaccine access, prospects of expanding distribution to primary care & pharmacy, future of health reform & more. Click here to listen to the full podcast.

Center Director, Mark McClellan, and former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb discuss the COVID-19 variants and what adaptations can be made to keep treatments and vaccines current and effective in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “A Light Regulatory Touch to Keep Covid Drugs Current.” Read the commentary.

Duke public policy undergraduate Emma Dries joined Core Faculty member Nathan Boucher to co-author “COVID-19 Vaccination –The Divide Between Formal and Informal Caregivers,” in Carework Network. Read the article.

Duke-Margolis continues to facilitate North Carolina’s Council on Health Care Coverage. The Council was charged with reviewing the state of health care coverage in North Carolina, exploring how other states have increased health care coverage, learning from other Council members, and developing a set of principles to guide policymakers in increasing coverage in the state. The fourth and final meeting took place on January 22, 2021. Click here for more information and to view meeting agendas and recordings

A team of Duke Core Faculty, graduates, undergraduates and researchers, Brystana Kaufman, Thuy-vi Nguyen, Laura Benzing, Jessica Beliveau, Christina Silcox, and Charlene Wong co-authored ””Factors Associated with Initial Public School Reopening Plans During the US COVID-19 Pandemic: a Retrospective Study" in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Read the article.

Core Faculty Member Nathan Boucher examined the impact of COVID-19 on residents of North Carolina’s long-term care facilities and how the virus has contributed to already existing social isolation in “No hugs allowed: isolation and inequity in North Carolina long-term services and supports during COVID-19” Read article here.

Core Faculty Members Gavin Yamey and Osondu Ogbuoji along with Duke’s Center for Policy Impact in Global Health published a working paper, with the assistance of Mackenzie Zepeda, a 2019 Duke-Margolis intern, entitled “Transitioning from health aid: a scoping review of transition readiness assessment tools”. Gavin and Osondu also published “We Can't Afford to Wait for COVID-19 Vaccines To Be Rolled Out.” In addition, Gavin discussed vaccines in an interview conducted by Newsy. Learn more about Duke’s Center for Policy Impact in Global Health COVID-19 here.

RESEARCH

Core Faculty member Virginia Wang is a co-author of “Facility-level variation in dialysis utilization and mortality among older adults with incident end-stage kidney disease,” published in JAMA Network Open Read the article.

Core Faculty member Nina Sperber is the lead author of “The face of the programme’: How local clinicians shape decisions about eligibility for a national caregiver support programme in the USA,” in the Journal of Health Services Research & Policy. Read the article.

Managing Associate Rebecca Whittaker joined Core Faculty member Nina Sperber co-authored, "Coincidence analysis: a new method for causal inference in implementation science," in Implementation Science. Read the article.

Core Faculty member Christine Goertz co-authored, “Visit Frequency and Outcomes for Patients Using Ongoing Chiropractic Care for Chronic Low-Back and Neck Pain: An Observational Longitudinal Study,” in Pain Physician. Read the article.

Core Faculty Member Courtney Van Houtven co-authored "Long-Term Care Reforms Should Begin with Paid Home Care Providers." Read more here.

Core Faculty Member Charlene Wong co-authored the perspective on pediatric value-based payments, “The Need for New Cost Measures in Pediatric Value-Based Payment.” Read more here.

Core Faculty member Nathan Boucher, along with other Duke-affiliated co-authors, published “Access to end-of-life care for undocumented immigrants: a clinician survey”. Read the full paper here.

Postdoctoral Research Associate Michelle Franklin co-authored a study entitled "Identifying Individuals with Intellectual Disability Within a Population Study". Read the full study here.

William Bleser participated in a panel entitled “The Future of Health Policy Under the Biden Administration.” The event was coordinated by The University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine

Center Director Mark McClellan returns to the APG on American Healthcare podcast, where he comments on the future of value-based care in the post-pandemic era. Listen to the recording here.

Duke-Margolis Core Faculty members  Brystana Kaufman, Nathan Boucher, Trevor Lentz, and Corinna Sorenson have been named to the Duke University School of Medicine's 2021 LEADER cohort. Designed for junior faculty who are leading a research group and driving their own research agenda, the course provides insight into leadership and team building as well as direction on how to develop and manage a scientific laboratory or research program, how to improve productivity, and how to harness creativity and innovation.

Digital Health Policy Fellow, Christina Silcox, participated in a panel entitled, Trust and The Impact of AI on Health Care, at the All-Digital CES 2021. For more information about the discussion, read the articles published by Mobi Health News, STAT, and MediCityNews.

Elizabeth “Beth” Boyer, MPH, is a new research associate on the Center’s biomedical team. She will focus on supporting the Center’s FDA cooperative agreements and Duke-Margolis work with the Gates Foundation on infectious disease drug development. Beth comes to Duke-Margolis from Global Health Strategies, a communications and advocacy firm focused on international health and development. She is a former researcher who contributed to the develop of the 2018 Access to Medicine Index – a ranking of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies’ efforts to improve access to medicine in developing countries. Beth earned her Master’s in Public Health from Boston University and her Bachelor of Science in Biology Messiah College.

Trevan Locke, PhD, is a new research associate on the Center’s biomedical team. In addition to supporting the Center’s FDA cooperative agreements, Trevan also will work to advance Duke-Margolis real-world evidence collaborative and our growing real-world evidence portfolio. Previously, Trevan was a Regulatory Science and Policy Analyst at the American Association for Cancer Research where he monitored, analyzed, and reported on scientific, regulatory, and policy issues relevant to cancer research, including real-world evidence, artificial intelligence, clinical trial design, clinical trial disparities, digital health, and the approval and coverage of diagnostic tests. He earned his PhD from Rutgers University and his dissertation focused on fusogenic targeting liposomes for chemotherapy. He has a Bachelors of Engineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Vanderbilt University.

Pregnant people have historically been excluded from clinical trials for new and existing therapeutics. Clearer scientific understanding of the risks and benefits associated with the use of medications during pregnancy, for pregnant people and their developing fetuses, is essential to the safe and effective management of chronic and acute medical conditions experienced during pregnancy.

Duke-Margolis, under a cooperative agreement with the FDA, is convening a public, virtual-webinar to discuss the need for clinical research as well as scientific and ethical considerations for the inclusion of pregnant women in clinical trials. Click here to register.

Duke-Margolis, in coordination with the FDA will hold a two-day, virtual workshop focused on considerations about study design and conduct when using evidence from observational studies to inform regulatory decisions.

The conference will also focus on challenges with data adequacy and bias in observational studies that may affect casual inference. Panel discussions will explore how to realize benefits and identify gaps in knowledge and strategies for addressing those gaps. Click here to register.