Public Affairs Discussion Group

The U.S. News and World Report Hospital Rankings

Ashwini Sehgal, MD – Duncan Neuhauser Professor of Community Health Improvement and Director, Center for Reducing Health Disparities, CWRU and Metrohealth Medical Center

Friday October 1, 2010
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Crawford Hall – Room 9
Inamori Center
Case Western Reserve University

Every year, U.S. News and World Report issues ratings of the nation’s “best” hospitals in various categories. They are widely publicized, and add to the prestige and economic bargaining power of the institutions that do best. Yet the rankings produced by U.S. News do not seem to fit with the statistical data generated by sources such as the Health Care Financing Administration’s analyses of outcomes for Medicare patients. Ash Sehgal, a leading health services and policy researcher with far too many positions to be listed above, investigated this issue in the April 20, 2010 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. He concluded that, “there is virtually no relationship between reputation and quality of care.”

Attention: Parking will not be available in the visitors parking lot next to Crawford Hall on October 8th, October 22nd and October 29th. On other Fridays a few spaces are available for visitors with mobility concerns. Parking options for visitors from beyond campus include the Severance Hall parking garage on East Boulevard, the small lot on Adelbert Road just uphill from Euclid Ave, and other lots on campus.

More About Our Guest….

Ashwini Sehgal is the Duncan Neuhauser Professor of Community Health Improvement and Director of the Center for Reducing Health Disparities at Case Western Reserve University. He is also Professor of Medicine, Biomedical Ethics, and Epidemiology and Biostatistics at CWRU. In addition, he is a practicing nephrologist at MetroHealth Medical Center and Co-Medical Director of the City of Cleveland Department of Public Health. Dr. Sehgal received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics, summa cum laude, from the University of Rochester, and his M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School. He then completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and a nephrology fellowship while participating in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of California, San Francisco. His active research interests include health disparities, access to kidney transplantation, quality of care, and renal nutrition.

Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:

October 8: Karen Gahl-Mills, Executive Director, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture: How the Arts Levy is Spent.

October 15: Kathryn C. Lavelle, Ellen and Dixon Long Associate Professor of World Affairs: Sovereign Debt and Sovereign Default: International Institutions in the Developed and Developing Worlds.

October 22: Professor Karen Beckwith, Assistant Professor Justin Buchler, and Adjunct Assistant Professor Andrew Lucker, Department of Political Science: Midterm Elections Forecast.

October 29: Special Inamori Center Event, as part of International Peace and War Summit: see http://www.case.edu/provost/inamori/peacesummit/.

November 5: Max Mehlman, Professor of Law: Why We Need Death Panels.

November 12: Kelly McMann, Associate Professor of Political Science: Unrest in Kyrgyzstan and Its Implications for the War in Afghanistan.

November 19: Jessica Green, Assistant Professor of Political Science: Global Responses to Greenhouse Gases.

December 3: Paul Ernsberger, Associate Professor of Nutrition: Health At Any Size.

The Friday Lunch discussions are held on the lower (ground) level of Crawford Hall. Visitors with mobility issues may find it easiest to take advantage of special arrangements we have made. On most Fridays, a few parking spaces in the V.I.P. lot in between Crawford Hall and Amasa Stone Chapel are held for participants in the lunch discussion. Overflow parking is also available in the Severance Hall parking garage on East Boulevard.

Visitors then can avoid walking up the hill to the first floor of Crawford by entering the building on the ground level, through the garage area under the building. The further door on the left in that garage will be left unlocked during the period before the Friday lunch. On occasion, parking will be unavailable because of other university events.

For more information about these and other Center for Policy Studies programs, please see http://policy.case.edu.

September 27, 2010

Upcoming Events

Affirmative Action as Government Speech: A First Amendment Analysis of the Colorblindness Doctrine

October 4, 2010, 4:30-5:30 p.m., CWRU School of Law, Moot Court Room, 11075 East Blvd., Cleveland, OH

Professor William M. Carter of Temple University’s Beasley School of Law will discuss U.S. Supreme Court rulings in affirmative action cases dealing with race-conscious government action, Equal Protection, “colorblindness,” and government speech under the First Amendment.

William M. Carter specializes in constitutional law, civil rights, critical race theory, and international human rights law. He is considered one of the leading experts on the 13th Amendment. Professor Carter received his J.D., magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, from Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He was a litigation associate in the Washington D.C. offices of Squire, Sanders, & Dempsey and Ropes & Gray, taught at Case Western Reserve University School of Law (2001-07) and then joined the Temple faculty.

“America’s Exhibit A” Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Living History and the Genres of Authenticity

Dr. Sidonie Smith, Ph.D., Martha Guernsey Colby Collegiate Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, 5:30 p.m., Friday, October 22, 2010 Moot Court Room CWRU Law School 11075 East Boulevard Cleveland, Ohio. Free and open to the public

In the early 21st century, memoir culture, celebrity culture, and U.S. political culture have converged as Presidential wannabes publish memoir after memoir, thereby converting “a life” into money, message, and conduit for voter attachment. Hillary Clinton’s best-selling autobiography Living History (2003) implicitly announced her Presidential bid, mobilizing personal storytelling to convince readers that this Senator and feminist First Lady could be President. Dr. Smith will explore how the genres of Clinton’s Living History produce, or not, the authenticity effect of a “real Hillary,” the convincing persona that is always at stake in the political field; and how both the narrating and narrated “Hillarys” do and undo the gendered idioms of political power.

Dr. Sidonie Smith is Martha Guernsey Colby Collegiate Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, and President of the Modern Language Association of America. She has published widely in the areas of human rights, women’s studies, the study of autobiography, and feminist and postcolonial literature and theory. Her many books include Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The Ethics of Recognition (2004) and Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, 2nd ed. (2010).

Thie program is sponsored by the friends of the Friends of the CWRU Eglish Department and the CWRU Baker Nord Center for the Humanities. For more information please visit the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities web site.