Kane, Robert L.

Robert L. Kane is a highly regarded expert in the field of aging and long-term care. Kane holds an endowed chair in long-term care and aging and is a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management. He also directs the Center on Aging and the Minnesota Geriatric Education Center and codirects the Clinical Outcomes Research Center at the University of Minnesota. In addition, he directs an evidence-based practice center funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Kane has received numerous awards and honors throughout his long career, including the President's Award from the American Society on Aging, the Polisher Award from the Gerontological Society America, and the Enrico Greppi Prize from the Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics. He has conducted numerous studies on the outcome of care and the organization of care, with an emphasis on the care of the elderly and those needing long-term care. Kane has served on the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Expert Committee on Aging. He has authored or edited more than 30 books and 350 journal articles and book chapters on the topics of health services research, geriatrics, and long-term care.

Kane earned his bachelor's degree from Columbia College in 1961 and his medical degree [Page 672]from Harvard Medical School in 1965. He did his medical internship, followed by a residency in community medicine, at the University of Kentucky Medical Center.

He began his career in 1968 as an acting coordinator in the Senior Clerkship Program at the University of Kentucky in the Department of Community Medicine. He then went on to serve in the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) as a service unit coordinator and as special assistant to the Regional Health Director. In 1970, Kane was appointed as an assistant professor and later as an associate professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine. After leaving the University of Utah in 1977, he went to the RAND Corporation as a senior researcher and later joined the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Following this, Kane served as dean of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health from 1985 to 1990 and then in his current position as a professor.

Kane's current research addresses the outcomes of acute and long-term care with a focus on the effects of hospital and posthospital care while examining methods to better deliver chronic care. He has published a book, It Shouldn't Be This W a y, with his sister, Joan West, about the personal difficulties encountered in obtaining long-term care for their mother. Kane also formed a national advocacy group, Professionals with Personal Experience in Chronic Care (PPECC), to put long-term care and chronic disease on the political agenda by drawing on the experiences of healthcare professionals in the field.