Leonard J. Marcus (born 1952) is an American social scientist and administrator. He is director of the Program for Health Care Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University, and founding co-director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, a joint program of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
Biography
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Marcus obtained his B.A. in social work and Hebrew in 1973 at the University of Wisconsin, where in 1974 he also obtained his M.S.W. in administration and psychotherapy. In 1983 he obtained his Ph.D. in Policy and Organization at the Florence Heller Graduate School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare of the Brandeis University.
Since 1995 Marcus is director of the Program for Health Care Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at Harvard University, and also serves as lecturer on Public Health Practice. Since 2003 he is also co-director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, a joint program of the Harvard School of Public Health and the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Since 2003 he also is Co-Director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative.
He also served on the faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, from 2010 to 2013. He has consulted to, trained, or provided executive coaching to leading health care organizations, including Kaiser-Permanente Health Plan, Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center (Boston), and the American Medical Association. In 1992, he co-founded Health Care Negotiation Associates, a national consulting, mediating, and training organization. His has lectured across North America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Work
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.
In recent years, Marcus' research, teaching, and consultation have played a key role in national and international terrorism preparedness and emergency response. He is considered a pioneer in the field of health care negotiation and conflict resolution. Marcus has developed a number of practical applications of mediation and conflict resolution.
Marcus has directed numerous projects intended to advance development of the negotiation, collaborative problem solving, and conflict resolution field applied to health related issues. At the Harvard School of Public Health, he has received funding support from, among others, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the National Institute for Dispute Resolution, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to develop a curriculum, research agenda, and conceptual and applied framework for the field.
Healthcare negotiation and conflict resolution
Prior to being recruited by the federal government following 9/11, Marcus' primary work was in health care negotiation and conflict resolution. Marcus is founding Director of the Program for Health Care Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Harvard School of Public Health. He was the 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". He has written for Newsweek, The Boston Globe, the AMNews as well as a number of scholarly journals. A second edition of the book, co-authored with Barry Dorn and Eric McNulty, was released in June, 2011.