Dr. Marcus is founding Co-Director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, a joint program of Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, developed in collaboration with leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House Homeland Security Council, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense. In recent years, Dr. Marcus’ research, teaching, and consultation have played a key role in national and international terrorism and emergency preparedness and response. He has pioneered development of the conceptual and pragmatic basis for “meta-leadership”- “overarching leadership that strategically links the work of different agencies and levels of government,” and “connectivity” – the coordination of “people, organizations, resources, and information to best catch, contain, and control a terrorist or other threat to the public’s health and well-being.
Recent research activities have taken him to the center of emergency preparedness and response through direct observation and immediate interviews with leadership during the early H1N1 response, the 2009 Presidential Inauguration, the 2009 and 2006 wars in Israel, the 2010 BP oil spill, and in 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the Gulf Coast. His article, “Meta-Leadership and National Emergency Preparedness: A Model to Build Government Connectivity” has garnered significant international attention as its methods and techniques are used successfully by leaders during crises. He is leading a five year CDC project at Harvard and a three year project with the CDC Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to take meta-leadership training to 40 locations across the country. At the invitation of the President’s Advisor on Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, he lectured at the White House on meta-leadership to a cross section of senior federal department officials from across the government.
Prior to being recruited by the federal government following 9/11, Dr. Marcus’ primary work was in health care negotiation and conflict resolution. Dr. Marcus is founding Director of the Program for Health Care Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at HSPH. He is lead author of the primary text in the field, Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration. The book was selected as co-recipient of the Center for Public Resources Institute for Dispute Resolution 1995 “Book Prize Award for Excellence in Alternative Dispute Resolution”. In 1994, he co-authored Mediating Bioethical Disputes: A Practical Guide.
Dr. Marcus has directed numerous projects and authored papers intended to advance development of the leadership, negotiation, collaborative problem solving, and conflict resolution field applied to health related issues. At the School of Public Health, he has been Principal Investigator on grants from, among others, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the National Institute for Dispute Resolution, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, to develop a curriculum, research agenda, and conceptual and applied framework for the field. Dr. Marcus’ research interests have included: implications of conflict in health care services; the uses of mediation for resolving health disputes; and the contributions of conflict resolution to error prevention and patient safety. He collaborated with the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine to develop the Voluntary Mediation Program, the first initiative of its kind to mediate medical practice disputes directly between patients and physicians
Dr. Marcus has developed a number of practical applications of mediation and conflict resolution. He has consulted to, trained, or provided executive coaching to leading health care organizations, including the American College of Physician Executives, Kaiser-Permanente Health Plan, and the American Medical Association. In 1992, he co-founded Health Care Negotiation Associates (HCNA), a national consulting, mediating, and training organization. His has lectured in the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and Caribbean.
Dr. Marcus completed his doctoral studies at The Heller School of Brandeis University. He was selected as a Fellow for the Kellogg National Leadership Program from 1986-1989. In his spare time, Lenny plays saxophone and clarinet, is a cartoonist, and loves to travel. His e-mail address is: ljmarcus@hsph.harvard.edu.
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