Kathleen Kozak is a medical director for UHA Health Insurance and has nearly 25 years of clinical practice experience in internal medicine. In this role, she leverages her expertise to facilitate health care delivery from the insurance standpoint for approximately 59,000 members in Hawaii.

What did you hope to get from the Global Health Care Leaders Program?

I was looking for an internationally focused program to compare the different types of health care infrastructure in other countries. This program combined a comprehensive analysis of the health care system in the United States while also providing opportunities to review the health care delivery mechanism in other countries. One of my goals was to further the discovery of a novel combination of the successes of different countries to create potential solutions to our current health system problems.

How was your experience during the program?

The in-person classes in Boston were instrumental in taking advantage of learning from the leaders in medicine, public health, and the intersection of health with economics, business, law, psychology, and more. The speakers provided interactive lectures that were exciting, applicable, and often similar to what graduate students of their various departments would also experience in their classes. Learning from the Harvard faculty who are part of the CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) decision-making teams regarding coverage on a national level was unsurpassed.

How did you apply the program learnings to your work?

Immediately after each in-person week in Boston, I had the opportunity to share what I had learned with our team of doctors, nurses, and other insurance company associates. [These insights came from the Global Health Care Leaders program], whether it was from team-building exercises like the electric maze exercise led by Michaela Kerrissey, discussing concepts like the nudge factor presented by Cass Sunstein, or discovering the importance of prototyping a solution, as we learned from Linda Cyr. Each of these professors led to changes in how we work together and operationalize benefits and trial programs with our insurance members.

Has the program changed your outlook on your career in any way?

After completing the program, I was inspired to continue my education and pursue a master’s in public health from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. The quality of the program speakers was fantastic and directly impacted my decision to further my learning in public health. I believe that the intersection of public health and health insurance is an area not yet fully explored. I hope to find a way to integrate their similar goals of disease prevention, immunization, and disease management with novel funding mechanisms to support the health of the entire U.S. population.

What did you find most useful or interesting about the experience?

I was amazed at the quality and comprehensiveness of the program. I don’t think that many other executive education programs have the same packed syllabus with the experts in the fields of all different disciplines giving us their best work in a couple of hours as this program did.

My decision to get an MPH started there, and when I thought of which program I wanted to participate in, my first choice was Harvard, based on the excellence of the faculty that I had experienced during my time with the Global Health Care Leaders program.