Most organizational leaders have come to recognize that hiring and retaining a diverse workforce is a business imperative. But many struggle to achieve their diversity goals. In this Kenan Insight, we explore how organizations can measure their “organizational equity” — that is, their internal distribution of power and resources — and build a diverse workforce that leads to greater organizational success.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put 18 million jobs at small businesses in the U.S. at risk – which could as much as quadruple the nation’s total unemployment rate. The effects of both the coronavirus and recent government relief programs were explored by a panel of Kenan Institute-convened experts during a press briefing held yesterday. The full recording of this briefing—along with a deeper-dive analysis on the specific implications of the financial downturn on small business employment by Kenan Institute Research Director Professor Christian Lundblad and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Professor Paige Ouimet—is available in this week’s Kenan Insight.
The evidence concerning high deductible health plans (HDHPs) suggests three key patterns involving people with diabetes...
The challenge for public health officials is to detect an emerging foodborne disease outbreak from a large set of simple and isolated, domain-specific events. These events can be extracted from a large number of distinct information systems such as surveillance and laboratory reporting systems from health care providers, real-time complaint hotlines from consumers, and inspection reporting systems from regulatory agencies. In this paper we formalize a foodborne disease outbreak as a complex event and apply an event-driven rule-based engine to the problem of detecting emerging events. We define an evidence set as a set of simple events that are linked symptomatically, spatially and temporally. A weighted metric is used to compute the strength of the evidence set as a basis for response by public health officials.
Recent health policy efforts have attempted to promote constructive conversations regarding cost-effectiveness by increasing transparency for both patients and physicians. Spurred by access and cost challenges resulting from increasing pharmaceutical prices, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a rule that would require direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertisements to include the list price for a typical 30-day course of therapy, according to their weighted average cost. This Viewpoint discusses implementing price transparency for health care products and services where physicians spend an increasing proportion of their time—in electronic health records (EHRs).
In our previous Kenan Insight, we outlined the major findings in our recent report, Seven Forces Reshaping the Economy. This week, we explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has upended education and childcare, ushering in changes to both that will last far beyond the current crisis.
Unemployment insurance has been a lifeline for millions of Americans who have found themselves out of work in the wake of the economic shutdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. But with federal, state and local government coffers strained, the time has come for short-time compensation (STC) and partial unemployment insurance programs to receive a closer look. In this Kenan Insight, we explore how these little-known initiatives can benefit both employees and employers and provide relief to an ailing U.S. economy.
As the historic 2020 U.S. presidential election draws nearer, voters are taking stock of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on their lives and livelihoods, and demanding that policymakers present their plans for economic recovery. In this Kenan Insight, we look at the major forces reshaping the U.S. economy and offer suggestions for forging an intentional and equitable path forward.
In this paper we present a framework for linking smart products (with embedded real-time diagnostics and prognostics based health management capabilities) to a service provisioning system to create a system of ―self-aware product-centric systems. The framework includes a powerful ―learning engine capable of monitoring, analyzing and interpreting patterns of system/product behavior in real-time. The learning engine provides the capability of information feedback for real-time, ―in-the-loop control. This concept enables the service-provisioning network to provide customer services such as product health management at reduced maintenance costs, improved responsiveness to customer needs during use, and generally more efficient operations.
In response to the economic chaos caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government launched its largest fiscal stimulus in modern history—the CARES Act. But with $2 trillion invested in small businesses, unemployment benefits and direct cash payments to households, the CARES Act has still fallen short of its goals to spur consumer spending and restore employment. This Kenan Insight analyzes what went wrong, and offers suggestions for the anticipated next round of federal economic aid.
We conducted a noninferiority, randomized controlled trial to compare first-time HIV testing rates among men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender individuals who received a crowdsourced or a health marketing HIV test promotion video.
The Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise hosted UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s annual new faculty dinner Thursday evening at the Kenan Center. The institute, which supports the school’s outreach and research efforts, kicked off the event with an interdisciplinary seminar featuring a presentation by Professor Al Segars on his latest research, “Seven Technologies Remaking the World,” and discussion and Q&A facilitated by Professor Eric Ghysels.
When the human mind is free to roam, its subjective experience is characterized by a continuously evolving stream of thought. Although there is a technique that captures people’s streams of free thought—free association—its utility for scientific research is undermined by two open questions: (a) How can streams of thought be quantified? (b) Do such streams predict psychological phenomena?
As healthcare costs continue to rise, many Americans are looking to artificial intelligence to provide cost-reducing solutions. At the 13th annual UNC Business of Healthcare Conference, a panel of experts separated the AI hype from reality in a discussion of the limitations, risks and ethical questions surrounding AI solutions in healthcare.
New Kenan Institute Research Economist Sarah Dickerson says that while her research and writing will help further the institute’s mission, "I also aim to expand the mission’s scope by reframing some of the fundamental questions being asked."
At the institute’s annual Conference on Market-Based Solutions for Reducing Wealth Inequality, a diverse group of experts from business, government and academia discussed practical solutions for improving upward mobility.
Sexual health campaigns are often designed “top-down” by public health experts, failing to engage key populations. Using the power of crowdsourcing to shape a “bottom-up” approach, this note describes 2 creative contributory contests to enhance sexual health campaigns. We provide guidance for designing creative contributory contests to improve HIV and other sexually transmitted disease testing.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed vulnerabilities in many supply chains, none more so than the healthcare supply chain. What factors have contributed to the alarming lack of readily available healthcare resources in the wake of overwhelming need? And what can be done to prevent such a disconnect from happening again? Professor Brad Staats, faculty director of the UNC Center for the Business of Health, and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Professor Jay Swaminathan present the findings of their most recent supply chain research in this week’s Kenan Insight.
There is no doubt that the COVID-19 crisis has devastated the U.S. economy. But the particulars of this devastation are difficult to gauge, because unique aspects of the of the pandemic distort the data commonly used to assess such situations. In this Kenan Insight, we take a deep dive into the data to learn what it actually tells us about the economic impact of COVID-19, and suggest possibilities for a restart and recovery of the U.S. economy.
One of the long-standing damages of institutional racism in the United States has been a bleak economic outlook for African Americans. In this Kenan Insight, we ask whether today’s activism might prove to be a defining moment in turning the tide for Black economic futures, and if so, who will play the key roles in creating lasting change.