Claire Fagin Professor: Dr. Linda AikenDr. Linda Aiken, who has been Trustee Professor of Nursing here since 1988 has been named as the first holder of the School of Nursing's Claire M. Fagin Leadership Chair in Nursing, Dean Norma M. Lang has announced. Dr. Aiken, who is also professor of sociology in SAS and director of the Center for Health Services and Policy Research based in the Nursing School, will hold the new Chair for a term of five years. The Fagin Leadership Chair was established in 1991 "as a tribute to Dr. Fagin and her accomplishments as dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and as a vehicle to continue Dr. Fagin's vision of nursing as a research-based practice discipline with a vital role in shaping American health care," said Dean Lang. "Dr. Fagin's leadership moved the School of Nursing to the forefront of the nation's nursing schools." Dr. Lang also announced a lecture and reception to celebrate the naming of Dr. Aiken to the chair. It will be held at 4 p.m. October 1 at the School, where Dr. Robert Blendon, Harvard Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis, will address issues in public support for increased consumer protection against managed care in his lecture entitled The Public and the Managed Care Backlash. "As Director of the Harvard Program on Public Opinion and Health and Social Policy, Dr. Blendon is nationally renown for his research and surveys which focus on the roles public opinion and leadership opinions play in the formation of our nation's domestic agenda,"the Dean said. Dr. Aiken was appointed to the faculty here in 1988, after serving as vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, N.J. In addition to her appointments in nursing and sociology she is a research associate of the Penn's Population Studies Center and a senior fellow at its Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the National Academy of Social Insurance. She has served as president of the National Academy of Nursing, as a member of the Physician Payment Review Commission, the 1982 Social Security Advisory Council, and as a cluster consultant to President Clinton's National Health Reform Task Force. A leading national and international researcher and consultant, Dr. Aiken is currently involved in studies focusing on health care reform in the U.S. and the countries of central and eastern Europe, central Asia, and Russia, hospital sector reforms in Canada and Western Europe, and AIDS prevention policies in Chile. She is the author of numerous scientific and policy papers on the effectiveness and outcomes of health care in the U.S. and abroad.
Almanac, Vol. 45, No. 3, September 15, 1998
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