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Nembhard Receives 2007 Sloan Industry Studies Dissertation Award

Ingrid M. Nembhard, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Division of Health Policy and Administration at Yale School of Public Health, has won first place in the 2007 Sloan Industry Studies Dissertation Award competition.  Established in 1990 by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Industry Studies program was founded on “the belief that industries are sufficiently different from one another that they individually deserve rigorous and deep academic study.”  Nembhard will receive the award at the Sloan Industry Studies Annual Conference in Boston, Massachusetts which will be held May 1-2, 2008.

The award’s goal is to reward outstanding doctoral research in the area of industry studies.  Nembhard’s dissertation entitled, “Organizational Learning in Health Care: A Multi-method Study of Quality Improvement Collaboratives,” aims to advance empirical research on organizational learning by examining the improvement efforts of health care organizations involved in quality improvement “collaboratives.”  Collaboratives are organized programs in which teams from multiple institutions work to improve care around a specific topic.  Gail Pesyna of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation remarked that Nembhard’s dissertation was chosen from a “remarkable collection of industry studies research, which represents the efforts of the field’s most promising scholars.” 

”I have admired the work of Sloan Industry Studies Program Affiliates for years now, so to be recognized by this group of scholars is particularly meaningful to me. I am truly thrilled to receive this award,” said Nembhard.

The awards committee stated that Nembhard’s dissertation demonstrated “a deep and thorough understanding of a particular industry through direct contact and primary data collection” and expects that her “continuing research will have a significant impact on industry and academia.”  Nembhard was also awarded best paper based on a dissertation by the Health Care Management Division of the Academy of Management this year.

Since 1934, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a philanthropic nonprofit institution, supports research on the factors that affect the American standard of living as well as industrial and economic performance. The Sloan Foundation programs also support research and education in science and technology, and efforts to increase public understanding of these subjects.