The global health community has been aiming at ensuring health coverage for all. To achieve universal health care coverage, the German Social Health Insurance model is one solution. However, one major disadvantage of Social Health Insurance is the fragmented insurance plans, exemplified by 3,500 insurance plans in Japan’s public universal health insurance system. To improve the financial sustainability of Japan’s public universal health insurance, policy options include consolidating fragmented plans as already implemented in Germany and South Korea.

This presentation has two major goals. One is to evaluate the optimal health insurance size in consolidating 3,500 insurance plans in Japan through a simulation analysis using the best available micro data in Japan. The other goal is to discuss the global policy implications based on the experiences of Japan's public universal health insurance.

Dr. Byung-Kwang Yoo is an associate professor in health policy in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the UC Davis School of Medicine. Yoo’s unique career includes clinical medicine (MD) in Japan and research experience as a health services researcher/health economist in the United States. He obtained an MS in health policy and management from Harvard University, and a PhD in health policy and management (concentration on health economics) from Johns Hopkins University. Yoo used to work as a research associate at the Center for Health Policy at Stanford University, as a health economist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and as an assistant professor in the Division of Health Policy at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York State. He has published his work in leading journals such as Lancet, Health Economics, Health Services Research, the American Journal of Public Health, and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Minoru Aosaki, "International Banking Regulation after the Financial Crisis: Economic Impacts and Policy Challenges in the US, Japan, and the EU"

To address lessons of the financial crisis, the Basel Committee introduced a new international framework on banking regulations, known as Basel III. The world leaders subsequently committed to implement it at the last G20 summit meeting. A current key issue is how regulators in each country should/can transform their current regulatory regime to the new regime under their own economic and regulatory environments. To consider the issue, Aosaki examines how economic costs and benefits of the regulatory reform would vary among countries and discusses policy challenges of the regulators to ensure the benefits and mitigate the costs.

Pradnya Palande, "Population Dynamics: A New Approach in Understanding Cancer Development"

Cancer, the most vicious and hard to cure disease, results from an accumulation of genetic alterations best known as mutations, in our body. These mutations constantly keep evolving by natural selection. A consequence of this evolution is that a cancer treatment will tend to kill the susceptible cells but will leave the resistant ones to flourish. A few months later, the cancer will reappear and will be resistant to previous treatment. Hence studying the population dynamics of cancer will provide insight into development of cancer and will help in developing better methods for cancer prevention and therapy.

Palande has concentrated her research on population dynamics of cancer cells in chronic myeloid leukemia, a type of blood cancer. She is trying to study the role of the antibody diversification enzyme, namely Activation Induced cytidine Deaminase (AID), in the generation of mutations associated with cancer progression and drug resistance in chronic myeloid leukemia.

Naoki Takeuchi, "Energy Policies, Clean Technologies, and Business Innovations in the United States"

In January 2011, at his State of the Union speech, President Obama suggested setting a goal that 80% of electricity will come from clean energy sources in the United States by 2035. He also suggested that the United States will become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. 

In Takeuchi's research, he tries to understand the dynamic interactions among government energy policies, clean technologies, and business innovations in the United States. His research includes an overview of federal energy policies (both regulations and incentives), an overview of California State government policies, recent trends of clean technologies, venture capital investments in cleantech companies, and major areas of clean technologies and business innovations. In this presentation, Takeuchi will present case studies focusing on cleantech companies in the Silicon Valley.

After the Sichuan 5.12 earthquake, many people in the disaster area suffered from mental health problems. To decrease morbidity from mental disease, the Sichuan authorities worked with diverse hospitals to establish a “three-level network of psychiatric prevention and treatment.” The goal was to disseminate knowledge about prevention and treatment for psychiatric conditions from doctors to recipients, especially regarding symptoms. How to disseminate such knowledge effectively and efficiently deserves study. Based on a sample of 146 doctor-recipient pairs from 52 hospitals in diverse areas of China (including Sichuan, Beijing, and Guangzhou), this study examines the impact of knowledge characteristics, the network status of the doctor, the network status of the hospital with which the doctor is affiliated, and the relationship quality between doctor and recipient on the effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge transfer from the doctor to patient. Findings indicate that high-status doctors are more effective in knowledge transfer. In addition, low-status hospitals were found to have a positive effect on knowledge transfer efficiency. In particular, results highlight the strong positive impact that the quality of the relationship between the doctor and patient has on both the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge transfer. Finally, findings suggest that the relationship between knowledge characteristics and knowledge transfer is partially mediated by the relationship quality between the doctor and the recipient.