Profiles

Peter Damiano, Public Policy Center, Office of the Vice President for Research

	Peter Damiano, director of the UI Public Policy Center. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

“Sustainability” is a hot word these days when it comes to the environment. But Peter Damiano maintains that the word can aptly be used to describe research that has long been going on at the University of Iowa Public Policy Center. Damiano, director of the Public Policy Center since July 2007, says much of the center’s work is focused on making people and communities in Iowa and around the country more sustainable in a broad sense. That includes such things as investigating health insurance access for Iowa children or studying the efficacy of the gas tax to pay for road improvements.

Damiano, also a professor of preventive and community dentistry in the College of Dentistry, in 2000 led the first study of its kind on the health and well-being of Iowa children, which is now being done every five years and has been replicated on a national level. A Robert Wood Johnson Dental Health Services Research Scholar, Damiano joined the UI faculty in 1990 to lead the center’s Health Policy Research Program. In addition to directing the center, he teaches in the College of Dentistry and sees patients in the college’s Special Care Clinic.

Damiano recently sat down with fyi to talk about a symposium series the center will launch this fall in honor of its founder, David Forkenbrock; Damiano’s long family ties to Iowa City; and why you might find him at Regina High School with a hammer and nails.

Give us some background on the Public Policy Center.

We’re an interdisciplinary research center, organizationally housed under the Office of the Vice President for Research. Basically, our mission is to do applied, academic-quality research. And it’s all investigator-driven, meaning we determine where there are gaps in information and knowledge, and we go out and find external funding to study these areas.

[The late] Dave Forkenbrock founded the center in 1988. He was a nationally renowned transportation policy researcher and did a great job of creating a positive environment for research. When Dave retired last July, we had transportation, health, and human factors policy research programs. Now we’re slowly expanding into some new policy areas, including criminal justice, housing and environmental policy.

How might the center benefit a faculty member?

In many ways. Number one, the center provides great benefits such as nice office space, excellent support staff for grants and scholarship, and most importantly, a lively environment in which to work. We have a great group of faculty and staff in an place where people are exchanging ideas and methodological approaches. It’s a real advantage to be in an environment like this.

Second, academic disciplines often value theoretical research more than applied research. Yet many faculty want to do research that more directly impacts the real world. Here at the center we take theoretical concepts and apply them to actual policy issues.

What are some ways the research here has shaped public policy?

Let me be clear: our goal is to inform rather than shape policy. We’re not an advocacy group—that’s very important, because there are some public policy centers at universities that do operate that way. We do the background research, for example, on health insurance coverage in Iowa. This past year I advised a legislative interim commission that was looking at health care reform issues. We made three or four presentations to that group, providing them with background information from our research about coverage for children and adults in Iowa. Then it’s up to the policymakers to decide if and how they’re going to use that information. This year there were, in fact, some health care reform laws passed that led to expansion of coverage for children. So that was nice, but we try not to become advocates, and it’s a very fine line between advocating and informing.

In our human factors program, Dan McGehee has done work on teen driving and did a couple of presentations to legislative commissions this year. Paul Hanley in our transportation program provided data to a legislative committee looking at gas tax issues. Betsy Momany and Jean Willard in our health research program frequently meet with state agencies representatives, presenting results of our research.

What’s the importance of the Public Policy Center to the state and the region?

Informing policy makers in Iowa and the nation through research is an important part of the mission of the Public Policy Center and the University. Being in Iowa, we understand the culture of the state and can provide Iowa-specific data on many important issues. However, you never really know for sure who’s going to pick up on your research and use it. I’m always surprised—I’ll get a call from someone in Florida who saw a report on something we did who will tell me it was very helpful to something they’re doing down there. And so that’s really the hope, that someone will find the research that we’re doing helpful in some way.

You’re starting the Forkenbrock Series on Public Policy this fall. Tell about how this came to be.

Our founding director, Dave Forkenbrock, passed away in January from lymphoma, and we wanted to honor his memory in an appropriate way. A symposium series on important issues of the day felt like a good way of doing that, and it also fits the mission of the center. We’re going to start this fall with two symposia. The first one in September is on transportation finance and policy, which was Dave’s area, and is being led by two of his colleagues, Paul Hanley, the center’s Transportation Policy Research Program Director, and John Fuller from the Graduate Program in Urban and Regional Planning. And then in October, we’ll be doing one on the subprime mortgage problem with Jerry Anthony from Urban and Regional Planning, and Katie Porter from the law school, as well as Jay Sa-Aadu and Jon Garfinkel from the business school. I’m very excited about it.

You earned your bachelor’s degree and DDS from The University of Iowa. Are you an Iowa native?

I’m from Milwaukee, but my grandmother graduated from Iowa in 1913, and so I grew up as a Hawkeye fan through her. She played field hockey and back in 1912 she was captain of the field hockey team. My great-great grandfather was in charge of the fields here. He had a thick Irish accent, and he was a real character known all around town. There were newspaper articles from the time when he died because everyone knew him. So I’ve actually got some longstanding Iowa ties. I graduated from undergrad and dental school here, and then spent a couple of years in the Indian Health Service working on the Navajo Indian reservation. I did clinical dentistry, and at the time it was the busiest Indian health clinic in the country. It was a great clinical and cultural experience.

Did you always know you wanted to be a dentist?

Way back in Cub Scouts, we went to a dentist’s office and made molds of each other’s teeth. I’ve always liked woodworking—I make furniture and things like that—and I liked the health care aspect. It’s the stereotype, but if you ask people why they went into dentistry, it’s ‘because I like to work with people and because I like to work with my hands,’ and that was pretty much it for me.

What do you do when you’re not in the office?

I’ve been very busy out at Regina High School lately. We’ve had two boys go through school there: one’s going to be a junior at Marquette University, and one’s going to be a senior at Regina this fall. So I’ve spent six or seven years on the education committee there. I did a lot of work on the parents-in-support-of-the-arts group and now I’ve been president of the booster club for the last year or so. We’re involved in a lot of different building projects and trying to support the student-athletes and the coaches. So I attend a lot of Regina events. I was out framing the press box last night. We’re also renovating the lobby and trophy cases. It’s the 50th anniversary of the school coming up this fall, so we’re trying to make the entrance to the school look nicer for alumni who haven’t been back in a long time.

What would your colleagues be surprised to know about you?

One of the nice things about the center is we have people who have been here for a long time. I’m sure they think they know everything about me. I did just come back from my 30-year high school reunion, which was fun. But I can’t tell any of those stories.

by Madelaine Jerousek-Smith

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