Beginning this fall, Dwight McNeill will be teaching HLTH 828: Population Health, a course that provides fundamental epidemiology and public health principles and analytic techniques that help professionals plan, deliver, and evaluate health services. “Population health stretches the boundaries of traditional healthcare and fosters a systems approach to solving problems and achieving health outcomes,” McNeill explained.

McNeill, who has a PhD in Health and Social Policy, as well as an MPH in Epidemiology and Public Health, specializes in advanced analytics, performance measurement, systems and payment reform, community accountability, and people-centered healthcare.

He is looking forward to teaching after spending most of his career working in business, government, and healthcare organizations. “I want to get back to teaching, writing, and ‘systems thinking,’ he said, adding that he enjoys having an “active interchange with students.”

McNeill is currently the president of WayPoint Health Analytics, a consulting practice that provides education, research, and guidance to on how organizations can use analytics to enhance business decision-making, engage patients, and improve the financing and delivery of healthcare. He is also a guest lecturer at Duke University Fuqua School of Business and lead faculty for the healthcare industry at the International Institute for Analytics.

McNeill has extensive experience working in corporate settings, most recently as the global leader for business analytics and optimization for the healthcare industry for the IBM Corporation, and previously as director of healthcare information at GTE Corporation (Verizon).

As the former assistant commissioner for Health Data and Analytics for the Division of Health Care Finance and Health Policy of the Department of Health and Human Services, McNeill helped bring an analytics focus to healthcare reform in Massachusetts.

At the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, McNeill helped translate research to action and promoted the importance of performance measurement and national priorities at the National Quality Forum.

He hopes his experiences will offer his students unique insight and inspire them to learn on their own. To illustrate his point, McNeill quoted William Hazlitt: "You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.”

McNeill has published numerous articles in Health Affairs and other prestigious journals. He is currently working on a book, titled Transforming Healthcare through Analytics: What can be Learned from the Best Practices in Retail, Banking, Politics, Military, and Sports, which is scheduled for publication in early 2013.

Peter Rivard, assistant professor of Healthcare Administration, has worked with McNeill to update and prepare the Population Health course for its fall 2012 offering. According to Rivard, “Dwight is a real find for our healthcare programs and for the Population Health course. Given his background, he has a deep understanding of both the business of healthcare and the potential of the rapidly evolving field of population health analytics to transform how that business is managed. He is an engaging personality; his curiosity is infectious; he has a knack for explaining complex ideas clearly; and he promises to be an outstanding teacher.”