CAVA Academic Advisors

CAVA Health Economics and Supply Chain Advisor Lawton Robert Burns, Ph.D., MBA, is the Chair of the Health Care Management Department, the James Joo-Jin Kim Professor, a Professor of Health Care Management, and a Professor of Management in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also Director of the Wharton Center for Health Management & Economics. Dr. Burns specializes in healthcare strategy, strategic change, strategic implementation, organization and management, managed care, and integrated delivery networks. He is a past member of the Grant Review Study Section for the Agency for Health Care Policy & Research, and a past board member of the Health Services Section of the Institute of Medicine. He is also a Life Fellow of Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Burns has analyzed physician-organization integration over the past twenty-five years. In recognition of this research, Dr. Burns was named the Edwin L. Crosby Memorial Fellow by the Hospital Research and Educational Trust in 1992. He has also spent the last 13 years studying the healthcare supply chain.

Dr. Frick is one of CAVA’s senior advisors, working with the firm since January 2011. He is Vice Dean and Professor, Johns Hopkins University, Carey Business School; and Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management, Health Services Research and Development Center. A consultant to the healthcare industry and government, Dr. Frick has more than 170 peer review publications, and works as an educator, researcher, and reviewer with a specialization in econometrics, statistics, health economics, and predictive modeling.

Dr. Handfield is North Carolina State University Bank of America University Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at North Carolina State University, and Director of the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative. An expert in change management, Dr. Handfield has published more than 100 articles in top management journals, and has consulted with over 25 Fortune 500 companies. He is Editor Emeritus for the Journal of Operations Management, and is CAVA’s senior advisor in the field of change management for hospital systems.

Mark S. Roberts, MD, MPP is Professor and Chair of Health Policy and Management, and holds secondary appointments in Medicine, Industrial Engineering and Clinical and Translational Science. A practicing general internist, he has conducted research in decision analysis and the mathematical modeling of disease for over 25 years, and has expertise in cost-effectiveness analysis, mathematical optimization and simulation, and the measurement and inclusion of patient preferences into decision problems. He has used decision analysis to examine clinical, costs, policy and allocation questions in liver transplantation, vaccination strategies, operative interventions, and the use of many medications. His recent research has concentrated in the use of mathematical methods from operations research and management science, including Markov Decision Processes, Discrete Even Simulation and integer programming to problems in health care. Dr. Roberts serves as CAVA’s senior advisor in the area of predictive model design.

Dr. Zöllner is Professor of Health Economics, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW, Germany); former Director of the Global Health Economics Department at Solvay Pharmaceuticals; and on the editorial board of the Journal of Medical Economics. A specialist in health economics, Dr. Zöllner is CAVA’s senior advisor for European health policy, HTA, pricing, and reimbursement.