Norwegian Harkness fellows 2018-24

The Harkness Fellowship is a one-year scholarship in health care research and health policy in the United States. The Norwegian Fellow is part of a group of 10-15 Fellows from various countries placed at top US universities and is part of a joint program organized by the Commonwealth Fund. Each fellow runs an individual project of relevance to both Norwegian and American health care with prominent mentors and supervisors. Besides increasing personal competence in health service research and insight into international health policy, networking is an important goal of the fellowship. Norway has been a member of the scheme since 2010, and the Norwegian fellows have been located at Harvard University, Brigham and Woman's Hospital, the University of Pennsylvania, the Yale School of Public Health, the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Brown University and Weill Cornell Medical College.. Due to the pandemic, the Harkness Fellowship scheme was put on hold in 2020-2021, and the eleventh Norwegian Harkness Fellow, Ane-Kristin Finbråten, MD, PhD, had her fellowship period postponed to 2021-2022. She worked primarily at the Department of Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College, but she also had projects affiliated with the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. Her main supervisor was Professor Bruce Schackman who is also director of the Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorder, HCV, and HIV (CHERISH) which is a research group that Dr. Finbråten worked closely with. Co-supervisors were Shashi Kapadia, MD, Assistant Professor, Weill Cornell Medicine and Benjamin Eckhardt, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, New York University Grossman School of Medicine. The main goal of her project was to investigate the effects of covid-19 on the work of eliminating Hepatitis C regionally in Norway and the USA. The secondary goal was to examine and compare low-threshold patient-centered treatment models that operate in different health systems to identify and understand success factors. The twelfth Norwegian Harkness Fellow, Hanne Marie Rostad, nurse, PhD, is now at the Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research, Brown School of Public Health. Her mentors are Vincent Mor, MD, professor, and Elizabeth White, APRN, associate professor. Both are funded by the federal agency National Institute of Aging through a major program project grant: "Changing Long Term Care in America: Policies, Markets, Strategies and Outcomes. In Norway, we have good health data that provides insight, and helps us to prevent and treat disease faster and better. At the same time, there is a lack of statistics and health data that are relevant to enable us to investigate whether we in Norway provide equal health and care services. In his project, Rostad will investigate how Norway and the USA study inequalities in nursing homes, both with a focus on inequalities in health outcomes and quality measures: which grouping variables are used (e.g. ethnicity), what are the outcomes being investigated (e.g. COVID-19 infected), which data sources are used, which level the data is on (e.g. individual, nursing home, municipality, state). In addition, she will also combine secondary data from Medicare (health insurance for those over 65 or with a disability) and clinical data from American nursing homes to investigate how nursing home quality has an effect on patient outcomes in the short and long term.

The Commonwealth Fund, en ideell amerikansk stiftelse, tilbyr fagfolk fra ulike disipliner og ulike land et 12 måneders program i helsetjenesteforskning og helsepolitikk i USA gjennom Harkness Fellowship-ordningen. Deltakerne gjennomfører et individuelt forskningsprosjekt av helsepolitisk relevans og aktualitet både i USA og i hjemlandet. Prosjektet gjennomføres under høykompetent veiledning ved et verdensledende fagmiljø i USA. I tillegg kommer opplæring i forskningsmetode og helsepolitikk, og nettverksbygging både innen årskullet av stipendiater (vanligvis 10 – 15) og innen det aktuelle fagfeltet. Slik utvikles kompetanse og erfaring som videreføres etter tilbakekomst til hjemlandet. Stipendordningen har eksistert siden 1925, men de siste 20 år er programmet utviklet til en systematisk opplæring i helsepolitikk og helsetjenesteforskning for personer i midten av sin profesjonelle karriere. Norge har hatt én årlig deltaker i programmet siden 2010. Utvelgelsen av deltakere skjer på bakgrunn av søknad. Både personlige egenskaper (bakgrunn, kompetanse, motivasjon etc.) og prosjektplan vurderes av the Commonwealth Fund og en norsk rekrutteringskomite. Med detaljert informasjon finnes på stiftelsens nettsider: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/grants-and-fellowships/fellowships/harkness-fellowships