Project EXPORT News & Events
CCH/HSRC/EXPORT Methods Seminar
UCLA-Semel Institute Center for Community Health
UCLA-Semel Institute Health Services Research Center
CDU-UCLA EXPORT Center
"Male Circumcision in the U.S.: Determinants and Policy Implications"
Presented by:Arleen Leibowitz, Ph.D.
Professor of Public Policy
UCLA School of Public Affairs
Katherine Desmond, M.S.
Senior Statistician
Center of Community Health
Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior, UCLA
Tuesday, September 11, 20073:15 pm - 4:15 pm
Center for Community Health, UCLA Wilshire Center
10920 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 350, Conference Room
*** LIGHT REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED ***
Please arrive by 3:00 pm for refreshments
ABSTRACT
Recent randomized controlled trials in Africa have shown male circumcision (MC) to be highly effective in reducing HIV infection in HIV negative males (relative risks of .45 to .24). In this presentation we discuss a study examining the relevance of these findings to the United States. We discuss recent U.S. trends in MC and the policy, demographic and hospital determinants of infant MC in the U.S. Data was obtained from the 2004 National Inpatient Survey, which reports very detailed data on circumcision, medical insurance and hospital characteristics for over 400,000 newborn males. Hospitals in ten states did not report race/ethnicity data; thus two-step multiple imputation was used to predict missing race/ethnicity data. Analyses were conducted on data aggregated to the hospital level. Findings from the study include race/ethnicity and medical insurance correlates to MC along with cost-effectiveness simulation results.
BIOGRAPHIES
Arleen Leibowitz, Ph.D., is Professor of Public Policy in the UCLA School of Public Affairs and directs the Policy Core at the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention and Treatment Services. Since receiving her Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University, Dr. Leibowitz has conducted research on labor economics and health economics. An expert on Medicaid and on managed care, Dr. Leibowitz's current research focuses on economic and policy issues relating to HIV infection in the United States. Dr. Leibowitz headed the Economics Team for the HIV Cost and Services Utilization Study (HCSUS) and has published on the cost of treating HIV/AIDS in the United States and on the relationship between public insurance and AIDS mortality. Her current research examines how the variation across states in public policies, such as Medicaid and ADAP, affects the amount and kind of health care obtained by persons living with HIV. In the area of prevention, Dr. Leibowitz is examining how insurance coverage and distance to providers relate to individuals' decisions to be tested for HIV.
Katherine Desmond, M.S., is a Senior Statistician at the Center for Community Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has extensive experience with survey data and is currently involved in the analysis of results from randomized trials conducted at the Center. She received her A.B. in Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and M.S. in Biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has worked for the Department of Labor, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services, RTI, SRI, RAND, and UCLA. She has published extensively and received as a coauthor the 1995 Article of the Year Award from AcademyHealth.
For further information, or to borrow video tapes of past seminars, please visit:
http://chipts.ucla.edu/events/methods_seminars/index.asp or contact Alan Semaan at asemaan@mednet.ucla.edu.
This seminar series is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (P 30 MH-58107).
