Good morning. My Graduate Assistantship position is with the Minnesota Health Services Research Conference, which is taking place today, all day. The keynote speaker was from the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard, and his presentation was titled “Pay for Performance in Health Care, Cause for Optimism?” The conference caters to a broad range of public health interests, with both upstream and downstream interventions. Here are the titles to some other sessions going on at the conference today: “Physical Activity in Minnesota,” “Improving Care in Acute and Clinical Settings,” “Customizing Health Education Interventions,” “Interventions to Improve Care for Individuals with Chronic Conditions,” “Health Insurance Coverage,” “Health Behaviors: Obesity and Alcohol Use,” and “Population Differences in Health Behaviors,” to name a few. Many of the presenters are University of Minnesota School of Public Health faculty, and others are here simply to attend. Overall turnout is really good, and the presentations seem very interesting.
With this conference, and three papers that were due earlier in the week, it has been a stressful one for me. I am excited that next week I finally start my key actor interviews for my master’s project. Turns out scheduling phone interviews with CEOs of large physician group practices takes a bit of time. Anyway, I’m excited to stop writing drafts for awhile and go out there and start making some findings (potentially).
With a busy week I’ve been well restricted to my school life and haven’t done much with friends unfortunately. But hopefully that will change this weekend. I think I’m going to kick back a little bit and give my brain a rest. Sounds good to me.
Also, it’s March, we don’t need ice anymore, lets get to Spring already Minnesota.
Well I have to turn my attention back to the conference now, because it’s lunch time. Very very important.
See you around the blog.