Visiting Faculty
Exposing the Maine Medical Center community to research being conducted in health services and facilitating collaboration between Maine Medical Center and other research institutions are two important goals of CORE.
The Visiting Faculty Program helps support CORE’s mission to facilitate research at Maine Medical Center. CORE hosts researchers from a wide variety of institutions on sabbatical visits and provides a stimulating environment for research. CORE supports these scholars in both their own research endeavors and collaborative projects with CORE investigators.
Visiting faculty contribute to the intellectual community at CORE both formally through research presentations and collaborative research, and informally by providing expert consultation to investigators at Maine Medical Center.
During 2008, CORE hosted two visiting faculty: Anne Stiggelbout from Leiden University in the Netherlands, where she is a Professor of Medical Decision Making, and Andrew Coburn from the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine, where he is a Professor of Health Policy and Management and the Director of the Institute for Health Policy.
Visiting Scholars:
Anne Stiggelbout, PhD, Sabbatical visitor, CORE
Dr. Anne M. Stiggelbout is a Professor in Medical Decision Making and deputy chair of the Department of Medical Decision Making at the Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands. She has MScs in Human Nutrion and Epidemiology, and moved to the field of Medical Decision Making in 1990. She obtained her PhD in Medical Decision Making in 1995, with a thesis on methodological aspects of utility assessment in oncology. Most of her research can be grouped under two lines of research: 1) quality of life and preference assessment, and 2) patient involvement in decision-making. She has extensive experience in questionnaire development and psychometrics. Her research in patient involvement relates to both shared decision making and risk communication. She has been one of the two developers of the courses in the Leiden Medical Curriculum related to shared decision-making and risk communication, and teaches all these various courses. She is Associate Editor of the journal Medical Decision Making and was Vice-President of the Society for Medical Decision Making in 2006-2007.
Andrew Coburn, PhD, Sabbatical visitor, CORE
Dr. Andrew Coburn is a Professor of Health Policy and Management and the Director of the Institute for Health Policy at the Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine. Dr. Coburn obtained his PhD in Health Policy from Brandeis University in 1981. Dr. Coburn’s work addresses the application of health services research to policy decision making. As the founding director of the Institute, for over 25 years he has worked with the Medicaid programs in Maine and other states on a wide variety of collaborative research, evaluation, and policy development initiatives. In Maine, the Institute has worked with the Medicaid program to develop data and IT systems and conduct policy analysis, research and evaluation to support policy and program planning and evaluation. Dr. Coburn is also a national expert on rural health. He is the founding director of the Maine Rural Health Research Center, one of six national centers funded by the federal Office of Rural Health Policy. He is a member of the Rural Policy Research Institute's Expert Health Panel and has testified in Washington on rural health issues. He recently served on the Institute of Medicine's Committee on the Future of Rural Health Care.
Dr. Coburn will spend the 2008-2009 academic year on sabbatical at CORE developing a project to examine the experience and capacity of health systems in the US, Canada, and Scotland to use research and evidence in policy decision making. He is working with investigators at the Health Systems Performance Research Network in Toronto to learn more about how Ontario has used data and research to inform decisions concerning the development and implementation of newly established Local Health Integration Networks. He is also planning to spend time in Scotland where there have been similar efforts to build a research use capacity in NHS-Scotland.