Health Policy
Crisis and Reform in the U.S. Health Care Delivery System

Charlene Harrington, Ph.D., RN has been a professor at the University of California San Francisco since 1980 where she has specialized in long term care policy and research.' She was elected to the American Academy of Nursing in 1987 and the Institute of Medicine in 1996, and served on various IOM committees. She designed a model California long term care consumer information system website funded by the California Health Care Foundation and has maintained the site since 2002.' She has directed the national Center for Personal Assistance Services funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research since 2003 and a project on Medicaid home and community based services funded by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured since 1994.' She has testified before the US Senate Special Committee on Aging, and has written more than 200 articles and chapters and co-edited five books while lecturing widely in the U.S. Carroll L. Estes is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the founding and former director of the Institute for Heath and Aging (1979-1998), and the former chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences (1981-1992), School of Nursing, UCSF. Dr. Estes is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and past president of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), the American Society on Aging (ASA), the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education (AGHE), and vice president of the Older Women's League. She has served as consultant to the US Commissioner of Social Security and to US Senate and House Committees for more than two decades. Professor Estes's awards include the highest research honor that UCSF gives, the Faculty Research Lecture Award; the American Society on Aging Leadership Award; the Kent Award of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA); the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Sociological Association & the Pacific Sociological Association; the Beverly Award for Research in Health and Aging; the Tibbitts Leadership Award in Gerontology (AGHE); and the Helen Nahm Research Award of UCSF. In 1998, the League of Women Voters named Professor Estes "A Woman Who Could Be President." Her research and publications investigate the impact of fiscal austerity and social policy on the elderly and the agencies and institutions that serve them. With research grants from government and private foundations, she conducts large-scale national- and community-level studies on the organization, delivery, and financing of health and social services. Dr. Estes studies the effects of recent policy changes on welfare state support for community care and its social consequences, the role of the nonprofit sector in the health and human services, the political economy of health, generational equity, and older women's issues. Her current funded research is on long-term care; managed care and mental (behavioral) health care for the elderly; the health and economic security of older women and other vulnerable populations; globalization; and the impact of federal and state policy on elders at risk. Dr. Estes is a prolific writer and public speaker who has authored and co-authored eight books and written more than 150 scientific articles and book chapters. Her most recent book is Social Policy and Aging (2001). Her book, The Long Term Care Crisis, was cited as one of Choice Magazine's top 100 most important books in 1994. She has co-edited five books, including The Nation's Health (six editions with Philip R. Lee). Dr. Estes' research papers have appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Health Care Financing Review, Health Affairs, Milbank Quarterly, Social Science and Medicine, The American Journal of Public health, The American Journal of Sociology, and The Gerontologist, among other publications. Professor Estes received her A.B. from Stanford University, her M.A. from Southern Methodist University, and her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, San Diego.