Marla C. Haims

Marla C. Haims Full Management Scientist Deputy Director of Global Health EDUCATION PhD, Industrial and Systems Engineering University of Wisconsin-Madison

POLICY AREAS International Health Care Health Care System Management Quality of Care Patient Safety

Dr. Haims is a Management Scientist at RAND and the Deputy Director of Global Health at RAND's Center for Domestic and International Health Security. Her fields of study and work are systems, organizational, and job design, sociotechnical systems engineering, quality of care, occupational safety and health, and patient safety. As a charter member of the core research staff at the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute in Doha, Qatar, through 2005, she gained broad experience working directly with public institutions in the Arabian Gulf to develop sound policy options and strategic plans. Dr. Haims is now located in Washington DC but is still playing a key role in assisting the Qatari government to develop and implement innovative and sound national health care strategies.

Dr. Haims has done extensive work in conducting program evaluations. She has conducted numerous formative and implementation evaluations, including evaluations of the development of regional coalitions for health care quality improvement, the effectiveness of quality measures in the Consumer Assessment of Health Plans Survey (CAHPS), the effectiveness and impact of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ's) patient safety program, and the implementation of various participatory work practices and community programs.

Prior to her position at RAND, Dr. Haims was a scientist at the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement, UW-Madison and served as a consultant at the Office of Quality Improvement, UW-Madison. Dr. Haims has participated in numerous field and survey research activities related to work organization, quality of care, quality of working life, and implementation of new technologies and other work system changes. She has also conducted various longitudinal studies examining the relationships between quality of working life, occupational stress, and work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Her research has dealt with a diverse array of environments, such as the State of Wisconsin Department of Transportation, major hospitals, health care providers, and health care consortiums in the United States and abroad, the United States Air Force, and a wide variety of government entities within the State of Qatar.