LeaRRn Network Podcast

Dr. Morris presents...

Megan Morris PhD, MPH, CCC-SLP presents "Advancing Healthcare Equity for Persons with Disabilities through Documentation in the Electronic Health Record.” Persons with disabilities experience significant barriers in accessing high quality, equitable health care services. The presentation will discuss research, policy, and advocacy efforts to advance systematic collection of disability status in the electronic health record, which is the first step to addressing these disparities.

Megan Morris, PhD, MPH, CCC-SLP is an Associate Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine in the Department of Medicine at University of Colorado, Anschutz. In her work, Dr. Morris aims to identify and address provider and organization-level factors that contribute to healthcare disparities experienced by patients with disabilities. She is a leading expert on the documentation of patients’ disability status in the Electronic Health Record and healthcare disparities experienced by patients with communication disabilities. Her work has been funded by NIH, Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. Dr. Morris is founder and director of the Disability Equity Collaborative, a community aimed at advancing equitable care for patients with disabilities through practice, policy and research.

Dr. Kharrazi presents...

Hadi Kharrazi, MD, PhD, presents, "Population Health Informatics: What, How, and Why?" In this presentation, we will discuss what is the rapidly growing field of Population Health Informatics (PHI), how PHI is leveraged to achieve the objectives of population health, and why PHI is critical for value-based care. We will also discuss the role of PHI in risk stratification efforts and the added value of new concepts in PHI such as social determinants of health, health disparities, frailty, and unique EHR data types.

Dr. Hadi Kharrazi is an Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management and of Health Informatics at Johns Hopkins. He co-directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Population Health IT, which aims to improve the health of populations by advancing informatics and data science methods to link and analyze siloed data across healthcare sectors. He leads the research and development of the Johns Hopkins ACG system, an analytic solution used by providers and payers across 20+ nations to risk stratify patient populations. He greatly values education and directs two doctoral programs in health informatics at Johns Hopkins. He is also a fellow of AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association) and an elected fellow of ACMI (American College of Medical Informatics).

Dr. Kalpakjian presents

Dr. Claire Kalpakjian, PhD, MS, presents, "Designing Data Inputs that Matter: Building an Infrastructure in a Real-World Learning Health System." Meaningful and relevant data are essential for any learning health system. Learning communities benefit from support in selecting and implementing data inputs – clinical assessment and documentation, patient-reported measures – that align with their learning goals. This talk will describe the development of an infrastructure to support the design and practical application of data inputs in medical rehabilitation that power cycles of learning to improve care. 

Claire Z. Kalpakjian, PhD, MS is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair for Research in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Michigan Medical School (UM PM&R). She is a biopsychosocial scientist with a clinical background in rehabilitation psychology and 30 years of experience of research and service to diverse populations of persons with disabilities. She is an expert in using mixed methods approaches to develop patient-reported outcome measures, particularly for patients with functional limitations. Her current research program focuses on reproductive health in women with physical disabilities to promote health equity, autonomy, and self-advocacy. In addition to her role as investigator, Dr. Kalpakjian is the faculty co-lead of the UM PM&R Learning Health System, working collaboratively with diverse clinical teams to transform into learning communities by evaluating their current practices, engaging in consensus building around changing and standardizing those practices, and selecting clinically relevant patient-reported outcome measures to complement clinical evaluation. 

Dr. Richesson presents

Rachel Richesson, presents, "Learning to Use EHR Data in Learning Health Systems: Focus on Computable Phenotypes." Learning Health Systems thrive with use of real-world data from electronic health record (EHR) systems in both observational and interventional research to generate real-world evidence. Computable phenotypes are specified definitions that can be used to identify patients with particular clinical conditions through computerized queries to EHR systems or data repositories using defined data elements, codes, and logical expressions. Computable phenotypes can facilitate research and learning by supporting the identification of patient populations, the delivery of clinical interventions, and the assessment of outcomes. The sharing and re-use of computable phenotypes can enhance the efficiency of pragmatic research and the dissemination of evidence-based interventions into real-world settings. This talk will discuss current platforms for identifying existing computational phenotypes as well as challenges and strategies for their implementation and validation in learning health systems.

Dr. Jacob Kean presents

Jacob Kean, PhD, presents, "Electronic Health Record Repositories: Benefits and Challenges of Data Standardization in Rehabilitation." Investments by the federal government in electronic health record (EHR) repositories position the research community to advance understanding of the epidemiology of clinical conditions and the quality, effectiveness and personalization of care. Data standardization supports those lines of inquiry but is challenging to achieve in rehabilitation care. This talk will focus on access to and use of existing EHR repositories, the benefits of data standardization in rehabilitation, and practical steps that might accelerate data standardization in rehabilitation and the use of EHR repositories.

Jacob Kean, PhD is an Associate Professor in Health System Innovation and Research, Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Utah, and Research Scientist, VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI) Salt Lake City VA Health Care System. Dr. Kean leads Analytics and Evaluation for Population Health, University of Utah Medical Group and focuses his research on the creation, implementation and operation of research networks and learning health systems to improve patient-centered outcomes, with a special focus on rehabilitation populations. Following the completion of his doctorate degree, Dr. Kean served as a Visiting Scientist at the Boston University Rehabilitation Outcomes Center, a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Rehabilitation Research Using Large Datasets at the University of Texas Medical Branch, an NIH Training Institute for Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health (TIDIRH) fellow, Research Scientist in Residence at Datavant, and completed a post-doctoral Master’s degree in Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics and Assessment (MESA) at the University of Illinois – Chicago.

Dr. Michael Kahn presents

In today's podcast, Dr. Michel Kahn presents, "Data Quality and Hidden Influencers in Electronic Medical Record Data." He talks about how large scale data sharing networks are creating multi-institutional clinical data sets for comparative effectiveness studies at scale. Much attention has focused on handling systematic bias in non-randomized routine-care data collection. We focus here on issues with data quality and “hidden influencers” that can impact the use of electronic medical record data in obvious and not-so-obvious ways.

Dr. Kahn is Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado Denver. Prior to retirement, he was the Translational Informatics Core Director for the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute; co-Director of the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine; and Director of Research Informatics at Children’s Hospital Colorado. Dr. Kahn also led Health Data Compass, the first-in-class Google cloud-based research data warehouse that combines data from four clinical, financial and research institutions plus state and federal sources (healthdatacompass.org). His informatics research focus areas are data model harmonization and developing sharable data quality measures in distributed research networks. 

 

Dr. Elizabeth Skidmore presents...

Dr. Elizabeth Skidmore presents, "Engaging Stakeholders and Health Systems to Optimize Pragmatic Trials." This presentation will discuss strategies for collaborating with service recipients, providers, and health systems to inform the design and conduct of pragmatic trials in rehabilitation settings.

Dr. Elizabeth Skidmore, an occupational therapist and rehabilitation scientist with expertise in neurological rehabilitation. Dr. Skidmore’s research studies examine rehabilitation intervention elements that promote long-term independence, community participation, and health among people with cognitive impairments after stroke and brain injury. Her studies have refined the design of meta-cognitive strategy training and behavioral activation approaches in inpatient, outpatient and community rehabilitation settings. She is currently conducting studies examining the effectiveness and implementation of strategy training in inpatient, outpatient, and community settings. Dr. Skidmore consults with practitioners, health systems and scientists representing a breadth of disciplines and serving various clinical populations; She provides guidance on intervention program design, specification, and fidelity. In addition to being a professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy, Skidmore is associate dean for research for the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences.

Dr. Julie Fritz presents

In today's episode,  we share Dr. Julie Fritz's presentation "Pragmatic and Embedded Trials – Strategies for Generating Real World Evidence." Dr. Fritz will address the evidence-practice gaps that are well-established in rehabilitation. Pragmatic and embedded clinical trials provide an opportunity to generate evidence within health care systems that may help overcome these gaps and improve patient outcomes. Dr. Julie Fritz, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and Athletic Training, and the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Health at the University of Utah located in Salt Lake City. Her research has focused on examining non-pharmacologic treatments for individuals with spinal pain, including clinical trials and health services research. Currently, Dr. Fritz is leading projects funded by PCORI and the National Institutes of Health including projects funded under the HEAL initiative addressing pain management and opioid use. She also leads a trial within the NIH-VA-DoD Pain Management Collaboratory investigating non-pharmacologic pain management in the Military Health System.

Dr. Ericka Merriwether presents...

In today's episode, Dr. Ericka Merriwether presents, "Confronting Racism in Pain and Rehabilitation Research: Reframing and Reimagining Study Designs." Racism is a global determinant of health outcomes. Lack of awareness of or an unwillingness to examine the significant impact of racism on health underpins research questions and study design choices that often deepen inequities in pain and rehabilitation outcomes. This talk will highlight: 1) the roles of subjectivity and advocacy in research, 2) common study design factors that perpetuate harmful narratives about racialized groups, and 3) provide examples of ways to reframe and reimagine study designs, methodologies, and dissemination strategies through a health equity lens.

Dr. Ericka Merriwether, an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Physical Therapy and Medicine, and the Director of the Inclusive and Translational Research in Pain Laboratory (I-TRIP) at New York University. Dr. Merriwether’s research identifies targets for culturally responsive, multimodal interventions for chronic widespread pain in adults with BMIs in the obesity range.

Dr. Elena Mendez-Escobar and John Goldie present

Dr. Elena Mendez-Escobar and John Goldie present, "Health Equity Accelerator – BMC’s Approach to Health Justice." Boston Medical Center is committed to accelerating the path to achieve health justice and truly deliver on their mission. This talk will discuss BMC's innovative approach and learnings to date, including how they are utilizing data and analytics to inform priorities, understand root causes, and propel change. 

Dr. Elena Mendez-Escobar, Executive Director of the Health Equity Accelerator & Strategy at Boston Medical Center Health System. Dr. Mendez-Escobar’s passion is to right inequities and improve healthcare for underserved populations. At BMCHS she co-leads the Health Equity Accelerator and oversees the Grayken Center for Addiction. Prior to joining BMCHS, she was an Associate Partner at McKinsey where she helped states, health plans, and other organizations serving Medicaid populations, to rethink strategy and transform operations. She also co-founded McKinsey’s Center for Societal Benefit through Healthcare, focused on underinvested areas of healthcare such as mental health, addiction, or social determinants of health.

Dr. Mendez-Escobar is joined by her colleague Mr. John Goldie, Vice President of System Analytics for Boston Medical Center Health System. In his role, he oversees a team of 25 analysts in delivering analytics to help solve strategic, business, clinical, and quality problems in the health system. He supports analytics for Boston Medical Center hospital, the Wellsense healthplan, and 4 Medicaid Accountable Care Organizations.