CPHAR Fellows Biographical Information

Judie Svihula

Judie Svihula, PhD completed her appointment as a CPHAR postdoctoral fellow in July, 2007. Dr. Svihula’s research examines federal entitlement program politics, social policy, and theories relevant to adult and aging populations (e.g. political economy, social movement). Her research as a CPHAR fellow examined witness testimonies in federal legislative hearings on the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA). Through a content analysis she identified the actors who influenced the MMA legislation and what values, issues and policy positions they expressed in the legislative process.  To complete her study Dr. Svihula assessed the match between public opinion and the policy choices pursued by politicians and examined the results within a political economy framework.
Dr. Svihula’s subsequent research as a CPHAR fellow compared the politics of privatization contextualized within the MMA and the contemporary Social Security reform hearings. The results included the witnesses’ key arguments as well as the similarities and differences between the two policy subsystems. Dr. Svihula weighed the witnesses’ expressions of concern for beneficiary populations in their hearing testimonies with the outcomes for these populations as produced by the MMA legislation, the effects of international pension privatization, and the rising costs of health care and prescription drugs nationally.
Currently Dr. Svihula, a Fellow at the Institute on Aging, is pursing funding to study the politics surrounding the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act and other long-term care components of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.   Post CPHAR work includes acting as co-investigator and project manager on the NIH/NIA funded R21 grant “Feasibility and Effects of Preventive Home Visits” as well as on the “Rebalancing Initiative Pilot Project,” a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid grant received by The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Svihula’s faculty supervisor for the CPHAR program was Victor Marshall, PhD. Jonathan Oberlander, PhD and Mary Altpeter, PhD also served as CPHAR advisors. Prior to moving to North Carolina, Dr. Svihula was a Tish Sommers Senior Scholar at the National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health and Institute for Health & Aging, at the University of California, San Francisco. She is a graduate from the University of California at Berkeley, School of Social Welfare, where she specialized in gerontology, social planning theories and collaborative intervention.

SELECTED Publications:

Cutchin, M. P., Coppola, S., Talley, V., Svihula, J., Catellier, D., & Heatwole Shank, K. (2009). Feasibility and effects of preventive home visits for at-risk older people: Design of a randomized control trial. BMC Geriatrics, 9, 54.  doi:10.1186/1471-2318-9-54

Svihula, J. (2009).  Gerontological theory:  A Commentary on Powell’s Foucauldian Toolkit.  Journal of Applied Gerontology.  28(6), 690-696.
 
Svihula, J., and Estes, C. L. (2009). Social Security privatization:  The institutionalization of an ideological movement. In Rogne, L., Estes, C. L., Grossman, B., Hollister, B., Solway, E. (Eds.), Social insurance and social justice: Social Security, Medicare and the campaign against entitlements (pp. 217-231). NY: Springer Publishers.

Svihula, J. (2008). Political Economy, Moral Economy and the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, XXXV(1), 157-173.

Svihula, J. and Estes, C. L. (2008). Social Security Privatization: An Ideologically Structured Movement. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, XXXV(1), 43-103.

Svihula, J. and Estes, C. L. (2007). Social Security Politics: Ideology and Reform. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 62B(2), S79-S89.