Faculty Biographies


Zoltan J. Acs (website)

Dr. Acs has a Ph.D. from the New School University. He is currently a Professor at George Mason University. He previously served as the Doris and Robert McCurdy Distinguished Professor of Economics and Entrepreneurship at the University of Baltimore. He has published more than 100 articles and 20 books, including articles in the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Kyklos, Journal of Urban Economics, Economica, Research Policy and Science Policy. His articles examine the interaction between entrepreneurship, small business and technology at a regional level. Acs was a research fellow at the U. S. Bureau of the Census, where he worked on job creation and small firms. For two years he was chief economist at the Office of Advocacy at the U. S. Small Business Administration. In 2002 he was the recipient of international award for research on entrepreneurship and small business awarded by the Swedish government.

Dr. Acs recently finished a research project on Knowledge, Geography and American Economic Growth funded by the National Science Foundation, the American Statistical Association, and the U. S. Small Business Administration, to be published by Cambridge University Press. The research examines the role that new firms play in technology spillovers and ultimately economic growth, as well as entrepreneurship policy as it impacts different regions. One aspect of this is the impact of obesity on health and disability insurance that makes small firms less competitive and in turn hurts innovative efforts across the economy. The cost of health care is a significant issue for small firms, and obesity is a contributing factor.

José F. Anderson (website)

Dr. Anderson is professor of law and director of the Stephen L. Snyder Center for Litigation Skills at the University of Baltimore School of Law. He received his J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1984. He directs the law school's litigation skills programs, teaches trial related courses and has widely published in the area of jury trial related topics. His articles have appeared in the Nebraska Law Review, The New England Law Review, the Loyola, The Los Angeles Law Review, The Ohio Northern Law Review, the Rutgers Law Journal, and the Howard Law Journal among others. He argued more than 40 cases in Maryland's highest court during his litigation career, mostly while serving as a supervising attorney in the state's public defender office. While in private practice he engaged in jury trial litigation where he represented both plaintiffs in tort cases as well as defendants including corporations being sued for alleged product liability injury. He served as a consultant to the Maryland Commission on the Future of the Courts and been actively engaged in court reform efforts in Brazil and Russia.

Dr. Anderson is tracking legal aspects of the obesity crisis, in particular recent lawsuits against fast-food producers.

John J. Callahan

Dr. Callahan received a Ph.D. in social science in 1971 from the Maxwell School of Public Administration at Syracuse University. He was assistant secretary for management and budget at the Department of Health and Human Services from 1995-2001. He served as the senior budget official, chief financial officer and chief information officer for HHS. Callahan served as acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration from March to September 1997. He has a wealth of experience in national and state policy issues as well. He was director of Federal-State Relations at the National Conference of State Legislatures (N.C.S.L.) from 1977 to 1979. Before that, he served as executive director of Legislator's Education Action Project at N.C.S.L. from 1974 to1977. He also served as a senior analyst at the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations between 1969 and 1971 and again from 1972 to 1974. At the University of Virginia, Dr. Callahan was an assistant professor of education and planning.

Dr. Callahan is an independent government management consultant with offices in Alexandria, VA. Current and recent clients include Lockheed Martin Corp., University of Miami, the National Association of Community Health Centers, and others.

Dr. Callahan's interest in the issue of obesity stems from its impact on Social Security disability as well as its effect on Medicaid and Medicare.

Ann Cotten (website)

Cotten is the director of the Schaefer Center for Public Policy at the University of Baltimore. She holds a doctorate in public administration from the University of Baltimore. Her areas of specialization include program evaluation, opinion research, public policy analysis, strategic planning, performance measurement, and public sector staffing analysis. She has conducted evaluations of a wide variety of programs relating to social welfare. Recently, Cotten completed a multi-year study on workload and staffing needs for the Maryland Department of Human Resources, Family Investment Administration. She has facilitated the development of agency-wide strategic plans and performance measures for a number of state agencies.

Across the U.S., state and local governments are looking to public policy interventions to improve the health of children. Regarding obesity and children, governments and regulatory agencies are beginning attack the problem by controlling the kinds of food made available to children while they are at school, setting minimum standards for the amount of physical activity schools must provide children, and monitoring the obesity status of school age children.

Cotten plans to examine the influence of public perception and public policy on the issue of obesity. She is particularly interested in investigating the policies that contribute to or mitigate obesity in children with a goal of identifying public policy interventions that may be appropriate for addressing the obesity issue in Maryland.

Michael V. Laric
Lee Richardson (website)

University of Baltimore marketing professors Laric and Richardson exemplify through their teaching, research, public service and business consulting how private and public sectors can collaborate to bring about social changes in consumer behavior.

Laric is professor and director of the Management and Marketing Division in the Robert G. Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore. He also serves as co-director of the Center for Technology Commercialization. Laric, who earned a Ph.D. in business from the City University of New York in 1976, has published more than 15 books on marketing and sales analysis using computer software. He has written more than 30 scholarly articles, along with numerous technical and consulting reports. His management development seminars (Computer Modeling in Marketing, Sales Analysis and Forecasting) attracted thousands of managers in North and South America, Europe and the Middle East. Customized seminars were delivered to Fortune 1000 companies.

Laric's consultations include American Express, AT&T, Bankers Trust, Black and Decker,Canadian Tire Acceptance, Chase Manhattan, CSX Corporation, Elmer Perkins, Heublein, Raco, Unical, and others.

Richardson earned a D.B.A. in marketing from the University of Colorado in 1966. He is a professor of marketing in the Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore. Richardson served as president of the Consumer Federation of America, the nation's largest consumer advocacy group in the consumer movement, as well as two statewide groups in Maryland and Louisiana. He has been appointed to a number of federal positions in the executive office of the president, Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration. Richardson's research has centered on consumerism and current issues in consumer protection. Recent papers have emphasized pharmaceutical advertising and marketing and health delivery to third world HIV/AIDS patients. Altogether he has published more than 80 articles and conference papers and edited three books in the marketing and finance fields. He has consulted for numerous state governments and nonprofit groups on utility pricing in 12 states, and for large corporations and trade associations such as Texaco, AT&T, the Direct Marketing Association, the Gulf Oil Corp., and Middle South Utilities on various consumer issues. He also has done significant pro bono consulting for consumer and public interest organizations. Richardson has testified before committees of Congress 11 times, and before state legislative committees 18 times on various consumer issues.

Laric and Richardson are interested in considering the role of marketing in the current obesity crisis, both as a contributor and a solution. Lifestyle changes require marketing and promotion of lower caloric intake, increased physical activity and healthier food products, but by doing more than just admonishing people. Changes in corporate response along with public intervention are trickling in. "Heart friendly" menu choices in restaurants and required informative food labels; low-calorie frozen entrees in supermarkets, and the campaign for five fruits and vegetables are forerunners at the national level.

Laric and Richardson are calling for more thorough marketing data as related to obesity, especially at the Baltimore and Maryland levels. Available national data mask regional variations among counties, cities and neighborhoods. Baltimore's higher proportion of at-risk groups means that local action is imperative and urgently needed. A marketing database for Baltimore needs to combine information about the impacted population with behavioral studies. Marshaling local government officials, business and industry representatives, the health community, and community leaders in a collaborative effort could help alleviate the situation, possibly making Baltimore an incubator of programs that work, showing the way for other communities in terms of investigating and implementing possible solutions.

David Levy

Levy has a Ph.D. from UCLA in economics. He is currently a professor of economics at the University of Baltimore. He has published over 90 papers, including articles in the American Economic Review, the American Journal of Public Health, JAMA, Medical Care, Preventive Medicine, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. His articles examine substance abuse and other public health issues. He has also written numerous government reports on tobacco control policy, alcohol control policy, alcohol, and cost outcome analysis, and has been principal investigator of grants from the National Institutes of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Cancer Institute, the Flight Attendant's Medical Research Institute, the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Levy is currently overseeing the design and development of the SimSmoke tobacco policy computer simulation model. The simulation model projects future trends in tobacco use and deaths attributable to tobacco. It also predicts the effect of tobacco policies, such as tax increases, media campaigns, youth access policies, and smoking cessation schemes, and helps to understand how these policies may be effectively implemented. The model has attracted national and international attention, and has been used in formulating national policies, including President Clinton's proposals to raise cigarette taxes. He has published 25 articles related to the model. He has developed models for the United States, the states of California and Arizona, for Taiwan and Poland. He is currently developing models for China, Malaysia, Thailand and Viet Nam in cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO). The models will play a fundamental role in the surveillance of tobacco use and the planning of policies that reduce that use.

Keying into commentators who have noted that the knowledge from these policies could provide a basis for approaching obesity issues, Levy intends to develop a model to consider future trends in obesity, the associated health risks and how policies might affect these trends. The obesity model will first be built to examine trends in obesity for the U.S. as a whole and for particular socio-demographic groups (by age, gender, racial/ethnic group, education, economic status). It will provide the basis for projecting future trends in obesity-related health risks associated with heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other major diseases, and the costs associated with these obesity-related health risks. It will then be used to examine the implications for various public policy approaches, including school-based approaches (through diet and physical activity), media campaigns and other information provision programs (e.g. on food labels), the regulation of pharmaceutical products affecting obesity, the increased provision (through public and private insurance) of pharmaceutical products surgical and treatments to treat obesity, increased provision of places to engage in physical activity, encouraging businesses to develop programs to encourage better health, and regulating food advertisements directed at children.

Alan Lyles

Lyles is a pharmacist with a doctorate in operations research/health policy and management from the Johns Hopkins University. He has extensive experience with health services delivery, public policy and applied research. Lyles is the Henry A. Rosenberg Professor of Public, Private and Nonprofit Partnerships in the School of Public Affairs' Health Systems Management faculty at the University of Baltimore. He serves as a Senior Fellow in UB's Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics and as a Senior Fellow in the Center on Drugs and Public Policy at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy.

Lyles's professional practice and research interests in healthcare focus on the consumer, with three main branches: 1) health insurance, 2) pharmaceuticals, and 3) communications of risk and gains. His work has spanned senior level health services management, academia, and public policy. He has presented testimony before a Joint Briefing of the Maryland House Economic Matters and Environmental Matters Committees and the Senate Finance Committee on pharmaceutical costs and access; chaired the Maryland Drug Use Review Board; and consulted with numerous leading health care agencies and organizations such as the World Bank and the United States Pharmacopeial Convention (one of the official compendia). Currently, he serves as a section editor on pharmaceutical economics and health policy for Clinical Therapeutics.

In recent years, Lyles notes, private employers and market forces have influenced changes in access to specific health services and in the evidence required to support insurance coverage decisions. In particular, insurance coverage, cost-effectiveness analyses and public policies will be influential in the evolution of prevention, pharmaceutical treatment and related services for obesity. Also, the lessons of pharmaceutical marketing will apply to the communication of medical treatments for obesity, lifestyle modifications, health insurance incentives and public policies.

Kenneth R. Stanton (website)

Dr. Stanton earned a Ph.D. in finance from York University in Toronto and an M.B.A. from the University of Rochester. As an assistant professor of finance, he is the banking and financial services expert at the University of Baltimore Merrick School of Business. His previous research work and consulting experience has focused on the banking and insurance sectors, including regulatory issues in the financial services industry and mechanisms for dealing with the problems of insuring against the risks of terrorism. He has also extensively researched the impact of a wide array of regulatory policies on the U.S. economy as a whole.

With Dr. Zoltan Acs, Stanton is cofounder of the UB Obesity Research Initiative. Recognizing an "infrastructure of obesity" as the source of the epidemic, Stanton and Acs saw the need for a multidisciplinary search for solutions. They constructed projections of obesity prevalence and expected costs for the U.S. and with Dr. Cotten, developed the UB State Obesity Report Cards and Maps. Dr. Stanton collaborated with Zoltan Acs and Alan Lyles to edit Obesity, Business and Public Policy, the book produced through the UB Obesity conference. He is also the coauthor of three chapters of the book. The chapters discuss various aspects of obesity control legislation including a chapter which explains how taxes can be used as a policy tool to address the epidemic.

Stanton also coauthored (With Zoltan Acs) The infrastructure of obesity and the obesity epidemic : implications for public policy, published in Applied Health Economics and Health Policy. Stanton has been actively involved in guiding and supporting obesity control measures in Maryland, North Carolina, Texas, and other states. Dr. Stanton participated as a health panelist at the Black Families Reunion in 2005, and at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Empowerment Tour in 2005 (view webcast). Stanton was a participant and panelist at a Baltimore Community Forum moderated by Stedman Graham: Taking Action Against Obesity in Communities of Color (MEE Productions/Stedman Graham & Associates) October 27, 2006, held at the University of Baltimore. Stanton has presented obesity research papers coauthored with various members of the obesity research team at seminars and conferences. He has also made a large number of media appearances across the country in relation to the obesity research team's work at UB, and the obesity epidemic in general, as well as addressing a wide variety of other finance and economics issues.

Stanton links his obesity research interests to mainstream financial research through the impact that obesity is having on corporations’ costs and competitiveness. A case in point is General Motors’ $1,525 per vehicle employee health care cost that is rapidly rising due to obesity. The result is that GM is even less able to compete against foreign automobile manufacturers.

Dr. Stanton is now broadening his research focus to address the health care insurance crisis now facing the US. Since obesity has a significant impact on health care costs, this is a natural extension of his work on obesity.

David Stevens (website)

Dr. Stevens is executive director of The Jacob France Institute and research professor of economics in the Merrick School of Business. A significant aspect of his research interest is the study of job affiliations and transition events following investments in schooling and training. Do personal, business, and taxpayer investments in education and training have the desired impact on student or trainee productivity and sharing in the return from higher productivity?

Stevens's sponsored research studies, funded by federal, state, and local government agencies and private foundations, generally have relied exclusively on administrative sources of information about schooling, employment training, and subsequent job affiliations and earnings profiles.

One missing data item that anecdotal observation suggests would improve the policy relevance of education and training return-on-investment calculations is obesity. Documentation of a concentration of obese former students and trainees in the negative, no, or low rate-of-return part of the full continuum would have immediate and important policy value, Stevens notes. The collection of this data, however, is a formidable hurdle in developing reliable and compelling findings that might influence behaviors and policies. Access to personal attribute information, such as Body Mass Index, continues to erode as commercial abuse of such information is brought to public and legislator attention.