Kathryn Whetten
Associate Professor of Public Policy Studies,
Community and Family Medicine, and Nursing

Kathryn Whetten Associate Professor of Public Policy Studies, Community and Family Medicine, and Nursing; Director, Center for Health Policy; Director, Health Inequities Program; Research Director, Hart Fellows Program; Senior Research Fellow, Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development She received her doctorate in health policy research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In an era of limited resources, the long-term nature of chronic illnesses makes individuals with chronic diseases particularly vulnerable to cost cutting initiatives. There is great incentive for payors to limit both the amount of care provided and the number of chronically ill persons for whom health care coverage is provided. Concurrently, this era of limited resources has provided a window of opportunity for the many types of health care and social service providers to work together for the first time to provide more efficient and coordinated care for the chronically ill.

Dr. Whetten's research focuses on evaluating and creating models of health care for chronically ill individuals. The target audience for her research is health policy analysts and decision makers, administrators and clinicians. Dr. Whetten's area of study involves the identification of barriers to care, the creation of models of care that reduce barriers to care in a changing financial environment, the evaluation of such models, and engaging in the policy debate. Evaluation includes econometric models examining cost, health outcomes, utilization of health and human services, and satisfaction on the part of the patient and the provider.

Much of Dr. Whetten's current research focuses on two of the most difficult populations to serve: those who are rural-living and those who are HIV- positive. Health Care systems that are able to serve these two hard-to-reach populations should be generalizable to other diseases and geographically dispersed populations. Dr. Whetten's future plan includes widening the research to models of care and evaluation for other chronic diseases, particularly in rural areas.