This weekend, Brandeis University will be bustling with thousands of visitors eager to take part in the 50-year anniversary of the Heller School, said Dean Lisa Lynch.
"We've had so many more people than we've hoped for RSVP. Every lunch, every event is oversubscribed," said Lynch, a leading economist who just completed her first year as dean of Heller.
The Brandeis community has a lot to celebrate this weekend, the theme of which is shaping social policy, said Lynch, who served as chief economist in the Clinton administration's labor department. She is chairwoman of the board of directors of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank, and is a member of the Governor's Council of Economic Advisers.
The festivities will kick off with renowned speakers on health care and the economy, said Lynch.
Lynch and Brandeis Director of Research Communications Laura Gardner said they regard the Heller School as "Boston's leading school of social policy," where research has often resulted in policy change on a state and federal level.
For instance, Gardner said, academics at the Heller School conducted research that helped lead to the landmark Child Abuse Prevention Act of 1974.
"Similar Massachusetts legislation followed suit, and today, corporal punishment in schools and homes is almost universally rejected," she said.
Also, she noted, part of President Barack Obama's proposed health care reform, calls for comparative effectiveness research (CER) in medicine - an area of research in which the Heller School has been at the forefront.
Scholars look at types of treatments and their outcomes, and have been involved in advancing the case for a "serious investment" in CER, she said.
Over the last two decades, Heller has also pioneered the science of early childhood development, leading numerous states to adopt legislation, Lynch said.
The Heller School's far-reaching social policy research is also helping shape an AIDS policy in China and researching the causes and consequences of "food wars" in the developing world, Gardner said.
Heller academics are also advancing policies that benefit intellectually handicapped individuals and their families, she said.
"As one of the oldest schools of social policy, Heller has helped set the public policy and legislative agenda on social policy for decades," Gardner said.
Featured speakers in this weekend's celebration include Boston surgeon, New Yorker contributor and book author Dr. Atul Gawande and Marion Wright Edelman, founder and director of the Children's Defense Fund.
Former Brandeis Dean and Chairman of the 50th anniversary celebration Stuart Altman, a leading health care economist who advised Obama during his presidential campaign, will be master of ceremonies tonight.
He will honor the university's longest-standing faculty member, David Gill, a professor in social welfare since the 1960s.
"David has a very strong belief in redesigning (political) systems so that they work well together," versus a capitalist model and "being tied up with making money and profits," he said.
"He's been a very effective teacher," Altman said.
Altman will also give a presentation on national health care reform at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday.
"No state has done more to be representative of what can be done (ideally) with health care than the state of Massachusetts. What we've done has been very instrumental in shaping health care plans for both Obama and the congressional committee," Altman said.
Altman, who called Obama's health care plan "moderate," said he will explain how Massachusetts' health care policy has served as a model for the proposed national plan.
"For the most part, it's a very balanced plan. It doesn't seriously change the way we practice medicine. All of the fears people have are really not understandable - they're almost hysterical," Altman said.
For more information about the Heller School's 50-year anniversary events this weekend, log on to: http://heller.brandeis.edu/50/index.html.
Joyce Kelly can be reached at 781-398-8005 or jkelly@cnc.com.
