Howard Steven Friedman is a prominent American statistician, health economist, writer and artist currently employed at the United Nations Population Fund

United Nations Population Fund

The United Nations Population Fund is a UN organization. The work of the UNFPA involves promotion of the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. This is done through major national and demographic surveys and with population censuses...

 (UNFPA) and as an adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 

Friedman is widely known for his role as a lead statistical modeler on a number of key United Nations projects and for his wide-ranging publications in the fields of statistics and health economics.

Career

Friedman was born in New York City and received his bachelor's degree

Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

 from Binghamton University

Binghamton University

Binghamton University, also formally called State University of New York at Binghamton, , is a public research university in the State of New York. The University is one of the four university centers in the State University of New York system...

 in Applied Physics in 1993. He received a Masters in Statistics

Statistics

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

 in 1998 and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering

Biomedical engineering

Biomedical Engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology. This field seeks to close the gap between engineering and medicine: It combines the design and problem solving skills of engineering with medical and biological sciences to improve...

 from Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

 in 1999. His thesis work focused on neural representations of object color through neurophysiological records of awake, behaving monkeys. This research leveraged a visual phenomenon known as Troxler fading which is related to color filling-in to explore how object color is represented in the visual cortex. He has also contributed to areas of changepoint detection as it applies to neurophysiology.

Friedman was awarded a number of awards during his undergraduate and graduate career including the National Merit Scholarship, Whitaker Foundation

Whitaker Foundation

The Whitaker Foundation was based in Arlington, Virginia and was an organization that primarily supported biomedical engineering education and research, but also supported other forms of medical research. It was founded and funded by U. A. Whitaker in 1975 upon his death with additional support...

 Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship NSF-GRF

NSF-GRF

The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program is an annual grant awarded by the National Science Foundation to approximately 2,000 doctoral-level students in the natural, social, and engineering sciences at US institutions...

Following his dissertation work, Friedman took a position as a director at Capital One

Capital One

Capital One Financial Corp. is a U.S.-based bank holding company specializing in credit cards, home loans, auto loans, banking and savings products...

 where he led teams of statisticians, analysts and programmers in various areas of operations and marketing. He left Capital One to form Analytic Solutions LLC in 2003 which provided consulting services in areas of designing, developing and modeling data.

He moved to a full time position at the United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 in 2007 where he has since been a lead on work including the ICPD @ 15 Costing, High Level Task Force on Innovative Financing, and the Adding It Up reports. He is credited with being the lead developer of the Integrated Health Model (used for costing the Health-related Millennium Development Goals within UNDP) and the Reproductive Health Costing Tool in UNFPA
He is a lead scientist for the interagency collaboration among UNICEF, World Bank

World Bank

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...

, World Health Organization

World Health Organization

The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...

, UNFPA, UNAIDS and UNDP for the development of the Unified Health Model, a project sponsored by the IHP+.

Friedman is the author of over 35 scientific articles and book chapters in areas of applied statistics and health economics.

Personal

Friedman was born in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. His father worked as a math teacher, his mother worked as an early education teacher. Howard has no children and is not married.

Literature and Artwork

In addition to his scientific career, Friedman is an accomplished artist and writer. His formal art training was at both Binghamton University and the School of Visual Arts

School of Visual Arts

The School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...

. His first book, Angels and Stardust, featured original poetry and artwork. In his doctoral thesis, he quoted both Ozymandias

Ozymandias

"Ozymandias" is a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818 in the January 11 issue of The Examiner in London. It is frequently anthologised and is probably Shelley's most famous short poem...

and Angels and Stardust in the preface. His paintings have been displayed in a number of New York City venues. His recent writing is focused on political analysis leveraging his statistics and United Nations experience.

Peer-review Publications

• Navaratnam P, Friedman HS, Urdaneta E. Mometasone furoate vs fluticasone propionate with salmeterol: multivariate analysis of resource use and asthma-related charges. Curr Med Res Opin. 12 October 2009.
• Friedman HS, Song X, Crespi S, Navaratnam P. Comparative Analysis of Length of Stay, Total Costs, and Treatment Success between Intravenous Moxifloxacin 400 mg and Levofloxacin 750 mg among Hospitalized Patients with Community-Acquired Pneumonia. Value in Health. 20 August 2009
• Friedman HS, Eid NS, Crespi S, Wilcox TK, Reardon G. Retrospective claims study of fluticasone propionate/salmeterol fixed-dose combination use as initial asthma controller therapy in children despite guideline recommendations. Clin Ther. 2009 May;31(5):1056-63.
• Loftus EV Jr, Friedman HS, Delgado DJ, Sandborn WJ. Colectomy subtypes, follow-up surgical procedures, postsurgical complications, and medical charges among ulcerative colitis patients with private health insurance in the United States. Inflamm Bowel Dis. 2009 Apr;15(4):566-75.
• Friedman H, Wilcox T, Reardon G, Crespi S, Yawn BP. A retrospective study of the use of fluticasone propionate/salmeterol combination as initial asthma controller therapy in a commercially insured population.Clin Ther. 2008 Oct;30(10):1908-17.
• Loftus EV, Delgado DJ, Friedman HS, Sandborn WJ. Colectomy and the Incidence of Post-Surgical Complications among Ulcerative Colitis Patients with Private Health Insurance In The United States American Journal of Gastroenterology, 103(7):1737-4, 2008
• Friedman HS., Tencer T., Chan W. Impact of HIV and HCV Infection on Hospitalization and Resource Use Among Hemophilia Enrollees in Commercial Health Plans. J Manag Care Pharm. Nov-Dec;13(9):790-8, 2007
• Friedman HS., Yawn BP. Resource utilization in asthma: combined fluticasone propionate/salmeterol compared with inhaled corticosteroids. Current Medical Research & Opinion. 23(2):427-34, 2007
• Keating KN., Friedman HS., Perfetto EM. Moxifloxacin versus levofloxacin for treatment of acute rhinosinusitis: a retrospective database analysis of treatment duration, outcomes, and charges. Current Medical Research & Opinion. 22(2):327-33, 2006
• Keating KN., Friedman H., Perfetto EM. Fluoroquinolone therapy for uncomplicated skin and skin structure infections: A retrospective database comparison of treatment duration, failures and charges. Clinical Drug Investigation. Vol. 25(10)(pp 621–631), 2005
• Friedman HS, Zhou H, von der Heydt R The coding of uniform color figures in monkey visual cortex. J Physiol (Lond) 548: 593-613 figures in monkey visual cortex. J Physiol (Lond) 548: 593-613, 2003
• von der Heydt R, Zhou H, Friedman HS, "Representation of stereoscopic edges in monkey visual cortex", Vision Research 40:1955-1967, 2000.
• Zhou H, Friedman HS, von der Heydt R, "Coding of border ownership in monkey visual cortex", Journal of Neuroscience 20: 6594-6611, 2000.
• Friedman, HS, Zhou H, von der Heydt R "Color filling-in under steady fixation: behavioral demonstration in monkeys and humans." Perception. 1999;28(11):1383-95.
• Friedman, HS, Priebe, C.E. "Smoothing Bandwidth Selection for Response Latency Estimation", Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 87:13-16, 1999.
• Friedman, HS, Priebe, C.E., "Estimating Stimulus Response Latency," Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 83:185-194, 1998.
• Nelson, C.A., Friedman, HS, Goozovat, T.S., Klein, J.A., Kneller, L. R., Perry W.J., Ustin, S.A., "Stage-two spin-correlation functions: tests from non-CKM-type leptonic CP violation in tau to rho nu decay", Physical Review D, 50(7): 4544-57, 1994.

Book Publications

• von der Heydt, R., Friedman, H. S., & Zhou, H. Searching for the neural mechanisms of color filling-in. In: Filling-in: From Perceptual Completion to Cortical Reorganization, eds. Pessoa, L. & De Weerd, P., pp. 106–127. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003
• von der Heydt R, Friedman HS, Zhou H. Searching for the neural mechanisms of color filling-in. In: Filling-in: From Perceptual Completion to Skill Learning (Pessoa L, De Weerd P, eds), Oxford University Press, 2002
• von der Heydt R, Zhou H, Friedman HS Neural coding of border ownership: Implications for the theory of figure-ground perception. In: Perceptual Organization in Vision: Behavioral and Neural Perspectives (Behrmann M, Kimchi R, Olson CR, eds), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002
• Friedman, HS, Neural Mechanisms of Object Color Representation in Areas V1, V2, and V4 of Macaque Visual Cortex, Ph.D. Thesis, 1998
• Friedman, HS, Angels and Stardust, Brunswick Publishing, 1995
• Friedman, HS, GaAs fluorescence detection of polarized electron beam. In: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Summer Research, Stanford University Press, 1992

Major United Nations Related Publications (analyst or co-author)

• UNFPA Contributor to "Financing of health systems to achieve the Health Millennium Development Goals in low-income countries" Lancet 2010; 375: 419–26 (2010)
• Updated Adding It Up Monograph: Collaboration with Guttmacher Institute (2009)
• Donor Support Report: UNFPA Commodity management Branch (2009)
• Thematic Trust Fund Report: UNFPA Commodity Management Branch (2009)
• The Case for Asia and the Pacific (2009)
• MDG Calculation Estimates: Collaboration with other UN agencies (2009)
• A Guide for Tools For Assessments in Sexual and Reproductive Health (2009)
• ICPD Updated Costing Estimates: Collaboration with other UN agencies, academic institutions and organizations. (2009)
• Contraceptive Projections and the Donor Gap (Meeting the Challenge) (2009)
• High Level Task Force Impact Estimataion: Collaboration with other UN agencies, academic institutions and organizations. (2009)
• Updated Adding It Up Monograph: Collaboration with Guttmacher Institute (2009)
• Donor Support Report: UNFPA Commodity Management Branch (2008)
• Thematic Trust Fund Report: UNFPA Commodity Management Branch (2008)
• Meeting the Gap: Collaboration with Futures Institute, John Snow International (2008)
• Adding It Up Monograph: Collaboration with Guttmacher Institute (2008)
• Donor Support Report: UNFPA Commodity management Branch (2007)