Lauren Southerland, MD, MPH, carries implementation science torch from Columbus to Australia
By Tyler Griesenbrock
CATALYST scientific editor
Published July 10, 2024
For Dr. Lauren Southerland, 2025 is only getting busier.
As a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at The Ohio State University, the Director of Clinical and Implementation Research for Emergency Medicine, and a faculty collaborator with CATALYST – the Center for the Advancement of Team Science, Analytics, and Systems Thinking in Health Services and Implementation Science Research – Dr. Southerland has been making a name for herself.
She recently earned headlines when she was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award, which will see her go to Australia next year to advance her research, “Accelerating Geriatric Emergency Medicine Models of Care Dissemination Using Implementation Science.”
As the first Fulbright U.S. scholar from Ohio State’s Department of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Southerland will be traveling to several Australian hospitals to look at how they have implemented care recommendations for older adults, who often need assistance or treatment that differs from what is needed by younger patients. The implementation science skills she will be putting to work in that setting, she said, were refined through her time working with CATALYST.
“For other faculty at Ohio State, how lucky are we to have this type of group who are willing to work with us? I’ve been able to email the whole implementation science group that’s come out of CATALYST with ideas and to obtain feedback,” Dr. Southerland said. “You can’t come out of medical school or even a research fellowship and know everything, so having a group to discuss ideas, collaborate, and troubleshoot roadblocks is wonderful.”
So, for example, when she encountered a barrier in her work, she reached out to Ann Scheck McAlearney, ScD, MS, the Executive Director of CATALYST, Associate Dean for Health Services Research, and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine.
“She said, ‘Let me connect you with someone else who knows how to do that,’” Dr. Southerland recalled. “I have worked with several different CATALYST members, and they have all been wonderful.”
But even before the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award, Dr. Southerland had been making waves. Another project she spearheads as Principal Investigator called IMAGE – Implementation of Multidisciplinary Assessments for Geriatric Patients in an ED Observation Unit – was one of the reasons the Department of Emergency Medicine vaulted ahead 10 spots in the annual Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research rankings.
The rankings are compiled based on funding received from the National Institutes of Health, and IMAGE was among seven projects the NIH supported in Ohio State’s Department of Emergency Medicine in fiscal year 2023 to the tune of $3.2 million total.
“IMAGE is an evaluation of whether incorporating geriatric principles and holistic care into the emergency department helps older adults,” Dr. Southerland said. “We actually stand people up and see what their balance is like, rather than just asking them.”
As examples, she said older patients who have visited an emergency department should be asked whether they normally have anyone to help them at home, or if they will need more help now that they have been sick or injured.
“It’s putting in place things that seem pretty obvious to do but are not done in the majority of EDs,” Dr. Southerland said. “We came across some external factors: the ED is always busy, there’s always something going on, there’s lots of relative priority considerations. That makes it harder to enact culture change.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, she said, offered another challenge, but the outcomes so far are promising.
“The next step in that work is dissemination of programs like this, but EDs are still struggling with understaffing. So right now I’m looking at other processes that we can do and gathering more data to help make those changes in other places,” she said.
That still isn’t the end of Dr. Southerland’s work to improve the experiences of older patients in health care, however.
“I have a couple of other projects going on, too,” she said. “One is a hospital/community/public health partnership at Ohio State East Hospital.”
That effort aims to link older adults without social support or financial resources with Franklin County Office on Aging case managers to address needs such as housekeeping, repairs, wheelchair ramps, home-delivered meals, and emergency alert buttons.
“The whole idea is to help keep people safely living at home for as long as possible,” she said. “We’ve installed two of their case managers in the Ohio State East Hospital ED.”
The connecting thread for all Dr. Southerland’s endeavors, whether they take her to Columbus’ King-Lincoln Bronzeville neighborhood or the states of Queensland and New South Wales in Australia, is her desire to improve outcomes for older patients by valuing the voices of people.
“CATALYST really ignited in me a love for adding in qualitative methodology,” she said. “Through my Fulbright, we’ll be conducting interviews with frontline staff, and if it hadn’t been for my interactions with CATALYST, I wouldn’t have been able to go there and do that.”
For details about Dr. Southerland’s Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award, read the Ohio State Office of International Affairs news release. For more information about CATALYST, visit go.osu.edu/catalyst.