Health policy expert Edward Lawlor to head SSA

Edward F. Lawlor, an associate professor in the School of Social Service Administration and the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, becomes dean of the SSA on July 1. Lawlor succeeds Professor Jeanne C. Marsh, the SSA’s dean since 1988.

“It is a source of great pride and pleasure that the next dean of the school comes from the faculty,” says Marsh, who will be returning to teaching and research. “I know others share my enthusiasm for Eddie’s deanship and my optimism for the school.”

Lawlor was a research associate at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government before receiving his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1984, the same year he joined the Chicago faculty.

Director of both the Center for Health Administration Studies and the graduate program in health administration and policy studies since 1990, Lawlor has published on medical indigence, hospital reimbursement and performance, health-care reform, and health administration and policy for the aged and the poor. The founding editor of the Public Policy and Aging Report, he is currently working on a book on Medicare reimbursement policy.

In the public realm, Lawlor is secretary of the City of Chicago Board of Health and coordinates an international program in Romanian health management and policy, sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development.

Lawlor says he’s inheriting a strong school at a time of flux in the field: “Welfare reform, managed care, and changes in child welfare are creating new demands for social services and the social work profession.”