CATALYST leadership

• Ann Scheck McAlearney, ScD, MS Executive Director of CATALYST

  Dr. McAlearney is the Executive Director of CATALYST, Associate Dean for Health Services Research, and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine in Ohio State's College of Medicine. She also holds appointments as a professor of health services management and policy in the College of Public Health and professor of pediatrics in the College of Medicine at The Ohio State University. She has over 30 years of health services research experience and has been actively involved in both performing research and disseminating research results to academic and practitioner audiences.
  
  Dr. McAlearney enjoys collaborative research projects and engaging clinicians in health service research as well as mentoring junior faculty in their research endeavors. She has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications, 10 books/edited books and 80 book chapters. Dr. McAlearney’s ongoing research focuses on information technology innovations in health care, population health management, quality improvement and organizational development, and she is an expert in both qualitative and mixed methods analyses. Dr. McAlearney received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University and Harvard University’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

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• Alice Gaughan, MS Assistant Director

  Alice Gaughan is Assistant Director of the CATALYST Center at The Ohio State University. She drives health services and implementation sciences research administration, research strategy development, and operations at CATALYST. With over 20 years of experience performing research at Ohio State, she has extensive experience building strong relationships leading to successful collaborations between health care and research teams. She is passionate about performing research that results in impactful change for the benefit of providers and patients. For the Center to STOP-COVID, she serves on the Leadership Team, collaborating with the project teams to plan, design and execute the studies as well as serve as the point of contact for community partners and Advisory Boards supporting the Center.
   
  Alice received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Bethany College, a Master of Science degree in medical microbiology and immunology from Ohio State, and a Professional Certificate in Management from the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. 

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• Laura Rush, DVM, PhD Learning Health Systems Core

  Dr. Rush is the Director of the Learning Health System Core at CATALYST. She collaborates with multidisciplinary teams to drive implementation of best practices and design novel methods of healthcare delivery. She also works with CATALYST faculty to develop innovative, high-impact research studies. 
  
  Laura received an associate degree in nursing from Marion Technical College, a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from North Carolina State University, a PhD in cancer biology from Ohio State, and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and Master of Business Administration with a focus in healthcare administration from Western Governors University. She is also a board-certified veterinary pathologist.

CATALYST faculty

• Naleef Fareed, PhD, MBA Assistant Professor

  Dr. Fareed is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. He leverages his training in health services research to primarily explore how the adoption, implementation, and use of health information technologies influence health care delivery. He also conducts studies that assess the effects of policies, interventions, and strategies on health care outcomes. His recent work incorporates the patient perspective and methods through which technology can be used to collect patient data. His work has been published and presented in highly regarded venues in the health services research field.
  
  Prior to joining the faculty at Ohio State, Dr. Fareed was an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Administration at The Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Fareed received his PhD from Virginia Commonwealth University in health services organization and research and a master’s degree in business administration in health care management from Union Graduate College.

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• Megan Gregory, PhD Assistant Professor

  Dr. Gregory is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the College of Medicine. Her research examines individual, social and organizational factors and conditions that impact health care teams to improve health care safety and quality. Dr. Gregory also seeks to develop, implement and evaluate interventions, tools and educational programs (including simulation) to improve health care teamwork. As part of this work, she studies the development and validation of survey measures.

  Prior to joining The Ohio State University, Dr. Gregory was an Advanced Fellow in Health Professions Education, Evaluation and Research at the Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness & Safety with the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from the University of Central Florida, where she worked for the Institute for Simulation and Training.

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• Courtney Hebert, MD, MS Assistant Professor

  Dr. Hebert is an assistant professor appointed in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and continues to practice clinical medicine as an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Internal Medicine. In addition to these roles, she also serves as the co-chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics Graduate Studies Coordinating Committee and leads all clinical informatics and public health informatics educational efforts for the department. Her research focuses on the secondary use of electronic health record (EHR) data for research and quality improvement.
  
  She has also used EHR data to study the effect of epidemiologic context on antimicrobial prescribing, as well as to develop a novel way to represent microbiology susceptibility data to enable decision support. Dr. Hebert received her MD from The Ohio State University in 2005 and a Master of Science in public health with a specialization in biomedical informatics from The Ohio State University in 2013.

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• Saurabh Rahurkar, DrPH, BDS Assistant Professor

  Dr. Rahurkar is a health services researcher and informatician with a focus on using health information technologies to draw actionable insights from big data collected during clinical care as well as public health practices to improve health care outcomes and inform policy. This includes building specialized registries using electronic health record data to facilitate research. Further, he has leveraged the latest in data sharing standards – Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) – to implement and evaluate FHIR-based apps in the emergency department and primary care setting across several discrete EHR systems. At Ohio State, he works closely with the team that leads the implementation of the FHIR standard at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center making this resource available to other researchers across the university. 
   
  Dr. Rahurkar is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and a core faculty member with CATALYST. Before coming to Ohio State, Dr. Rahurkar was a public and population health informatics fellow in the Center for Biomedical Informatics at the Regenstrief Institute in Indianapolis. He received his Doctor of Public Health in Health Services Research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Additionally, he is a trained dental surgeon.

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• Ashish Panchal, MD, PhD Associate Professor

  Dr. Panchal is an associate professor of emergency medicine with the Department of Emergency Medicine. He is passionate about improving patient outcomes in the prehospital setting and conducts research focused on prehospital airway management and improving outcomes from cardiac arrest. He began his career as a researcher completing a PhD in cardiovascular physiology at Case Western Reserve University. Following this, at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, he completed his medical training and residency. 
  
  At Ohio State, he is the program director for the ACGME-accredited EMS fellowship. On a national level, he is the research and fellowship director for the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians and is part of the expert panels for the National EMS Scope of Practice Model Revision Project and the Evidence-Based Guideline for Naloxone. He also is a member of the American Heart Association Emergency Cardiovascular Care Scientific Subcommittee and is the chair of the 2018 AHA/ECC Guidelines Focused Update for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care.

• Timothy Huerta, PhD, MS Professor

  Dr. Huerta is the Chief Research Information Officer for The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and the Ohio State College of Medicine as well as a Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Department of Biomedical Informatics. He brings to CATALYST both breadth and depth of experience in quantitative methods, implementation science, health services research and multidisciplinary collaboration. Dr. Huerta is a well-published, nationally recognized expert in the use of survey data to advance discovery and has been published in a diverse set of journals. Dr. Huerta also has a long history of engaging clinical practitioners in translating the value of research to practice, and he has been recognized nationally for his work in both mentorship and teaching.
  
  Before joining the faculty at Ohio State, Dr. Huerta was the director of the Center for Healthcare Innovation, Education and Research at Texas Tech University where he developed the infrastructure currently in use throughout the province of British Columbia for the online delivery of continuing medical education in community oncology. Finally, Dr. Huerta has a long history outside of academia developing tools and technologies that support both research and practice.

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• Daniel Walker, PhD, MPH Assistant Professor

  Dr. Walker is an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. His research focuses on a wide range of health services research topics, including efforts to use health information technology to improve communication, interorganizational coordination, and patient engagement. He is particularly interested in implementation science research that considers multi-stakeholder perspectives on health service innovations to improve patient and provider engagement. Dr. Walker employs mixed-methods approaches to this work, combining both quantitative and qualitative efforts.
  
  Dr. Walker’s current research explores these issues in relation to health system efforts to address social determinants of health such as food insecurity and digital equity, the exchange of health information across the care continuum, the implementation of patient-facing health information technology, and changes in delivery system configuration. Dr. Walker received his PhD in Global Health Management and Policy from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and his Master of Public Health in Health Management and Policy from Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health.

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• Todd Barrett, MD Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine, Division of Palliative Medicine

  Dr. Barrett is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Division of Palliative Medicine at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center who specializes in cardiac palliative medicine, mechanical circulatory support, and heart failure. He attended the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Kansas City, Kansas. He completed his residency at the University of Chicago Hospitals in Chicago and a fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

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• Janet Childerhose, PhD Research Assistant Professor of General Internal Medicine

  Dr. Janet Childerhose is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and the qualitative core lead in the Center for Health Outcomes in Medicine Scholarship and Service (HOMES). She is a qualitative bioethics researcher who investigates the adoption of harm reduction strategies in the U.S. response to the opioid crisis and how physicians navigate ethical dilemmas in their practice. As a critical medical anthropologist who uses a comparative lens, Dr. Childerhose is concerned with how institutions and policies in national settings shape the management of chronic disease and generate duties to care, and why some effective interventions remain stigmatized or inconsistently implemented. Her research has examined how billing codes shape physician care of patients with substance use disorders, adolescent decision-making for bariatric surgery, and how participatory approaches in translational genomics research challenge the asymmetry of the researcher-participant relationship. She is currently developing a project on the responses of Ohio public libraries to the opioid crisis that explores whether expanded access to naloxone is creating rescue obligations for non-clinical actors.
  
  Dr. Childerhose completed her MA in the history and philosophy of science and technology at the University of Toronto, her PhD in medical anthropology at McGill University, and postdoctoral training in bioethics at the University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining The Ohio State University, she worked with the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction in Ottawa.

   

• Robert Cronin, MD Associate Professor of General Internal Medicine

  Dr. Cronin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine. He is a tenure-track clinician-researcher with a career goal of using health information technologies to improve the care of individuals with chronic diseases. Dr. Cronin is board certified in internal medicine, pediatrics, and clinical informatics, specializing in clinical informatics, sickle cell disease, phenotyping and personal health informatics. His knowledge in these areas includes technologies such as patient portals, mobile health technology, and electronic health records, and topics of health information needs, effective health communication, and patient engagement. He also has methodological expertise in qualitative and quantitative methods, community-engaged research, and clinical trials. He has interest and expertise in the design and evaluation of electronic surveys, empowering individuals with health care and health care information technology disparities, and transitional care of adolescents and young adults with chronic diseases from pediatric to adult medicine.

   Dr. Cronin received an undergraduate degree in computer science from Cornell University and continued pursuing this passion after residency through a National Library of Medicine fellowship in biomedical informatics, from which he received a master’s degree. He completed his MD at The Ohio State University. His current research projects include his career development K23 grant and data coordinating center grant for the Cure Sickle Cell Initiative from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), and a part of the Data and Research Center for the All of Us Research Program.

• Samantha Jaglowski, MD, MPH Medical Director of Clinical Informatics-Hematology

  Dr. Jaglowski is an associate professor of hematology. She is the Associate Division Director for Ambulatory Operations for Hematology, the Quality Director for the Blood and Marrow Transplant/Cellular Therapy Program, and the Clinical Operations Director for Cellular Therapy at The Ohio State University. She a hematologist specializing in stem cell transplants and engineered cell therapies for patients battling lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. She is focused on quality outcomes and the challenges that patients face once they receive life-saving therapies, as well as improving those therapies to try to reduce long-term complications of transplant. As a member of the Leukemia Research Program at the OSUCCC – James, her research is dedicated to cellular therapies for hematologic malignancies, including engineered cell therapies for B-cell malignancies as well as the treatment and prevention of complications of blood and marrow transplantation.

  Dr. Jaglowski's recent research includes a phase II study of ibrutinib for the treatment of chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD), which led to the FDA approval of ibrutinib for that indication and a phase II study of CTL-019, a CD19-specific CAR-T therapy for the treatment of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). She has co-authored more than 60 articles in well-respected publications, including Clinical Cancer Research, Blood, Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation, and New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Jaglowski started her career at Ohio State as an undergraduate zoology major, and she also received her medical degree and master's degree in public health from Ohio State.

   

• Dan Jonas, MD, MPH Director of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics and Professor of Clinical Medicine

  Dr. Jonas is a Professor of Clinical Medicine, a primary care physician, a health services researcher, and the Director for the Division of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Jonas’ primary research interests and areas of expertise include delivery of preventive services, chronic disease management, unhealthy alcohol use, implementation, and critical appraisal and synthesis of health literature. Dr. Jonas has led multiple clinical trials and numerous projects critically evaluating the scientific evidence on health care and health policy topics for groups making national recommendations, such as the Effective Healthcare Program of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).
   
  Prior to joining The Ohio State University in December 2020, Dr. Jonas was at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for over 15 years where he worked as the Section Chief for Research in the Division of General Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology and as the Deputy Director for Research, Director of the Program on Medical Practice and Prevention, and Director of the Primary Care Research Fellowship at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. He has served as co-Director of the RTI-UNC Evidence-based Practice Center since 2012. Dr. Jonas received his MD from Ohio State and his MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

• Willi (Will) Tarver, DrPH, MLIS Assistant Professor

  Dr. Tarver is an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, as well as a core faculty member with CATALYST. Dr. Tarver's research focuses on the use of health information technologies (e.g., patient portals, personal health records, and health information exchange) and understanding their potential to improve care coordination for people with cancer and who are part of underserved populations.
  
  Before coming to Ohio State, Dr. Tarver was a VA Medical Informatics Fellow in the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center's Health Services Research and Development Center for Health Information and Communication in Indianapolis. He received his Doctor of Public Health in Health Care Organization and Policy from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

• Carmen Quatman, MD, PhD Associate Professor of Clinical Orthopaedics

  Dr. Quatman is an Associate Professor of Clinical Orthopaedics in the Division of Trauma. As an orthopedic surgeon, she specializes in orthopedic trauma care with a special emphasis on geriatric care. Dr. Quatman is passionate about integrating cutting-edge technology into clinical care to significantly improve patient outcomes. She is one of two surgeons in the country to complete a geriatric orthopedic training fellowship, helped create criteria for fellowship certification in geriatric orthopedic trauma care through the International Geriatric Fracture Society, was selected to participate in the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Aging Bulter-Williams Scholar Program, and was a member of a research team that received the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation Clinical Research Award for 15 years of collaborative research on knee injury prevention strategies.
   
  Dr. Quatman received her MD and PhD from the University of Toledo, and she trained at The Ohio State University for her residency.

• Jennifer Lee, MD Clinical Informatics Fellow

  Dr. Lee is a clinical assistant fellow of pediatrics at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. She practices pediatric gastroenterology and clinical informatics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. She wants to leverage technology to improve bedside clinical care and understand how the implementation of technology affects physician and patient experience through the health care system. Dr. Lee's recent studies focus on understanding physician practices regarding use of the electronic health record and studying the effects of operational changes to the EHR as well as point of care clinical decision support. She received her medical degree from the West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown and completed her residency in pediatrics and fellowship in pediatric gastroenterology at the University of Tennessee Health Science center at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital/St. Judes Children's Hospital in Memphis. She completed a clinical informatics fellowship at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center.

• Rajitha Venkatesh, MD Assistant Professor of Pediatrics

  Dr. Venkatesh is an assistant professor of Clinical Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and she is also an attending pediatric gastroenterologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and part of the Eosinophilic GI Disease Program. Dr. Venkatesh attended Wilkes University for her undergraduate education as a Wilkes Scholar. She attended SUNY Upstate Medical University for medical school and was selected as a NIH Fogarty Clinical Scholar. She completed residency training in Pediatrics at Yale-New Haven Children’s and fellowship training in Gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children.
   
  Her clinical interests span all gastrointestinal disorders with a special interest in eosinophilic GI disorders including eosinophilic esophagitis. She is the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition (NASPGHAN) Eosinophilic GI Disorders (EGID) Special Interest Group Chair. Her interests include innovation in clinical care including transnasal endoscopy for eosinophilic esophagitis. In addition, she has an interest in health care disparities and improving access to care specifically through telemedicine. She serves on multiple national committees including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Button Battery Taskforce as well as the AAP Section on Telehealth Care. She also serves as the Social Media Editor for JPGN Reports, a peer-reviewed open access journal that is a joint publication of NASPGAN and ESPGHAN.

• Eliza Beal, MD, MS Clinical Fellow

  Dr. Beal is a clinical fellow at The Ohio State University. She received a bachelor's degree in biological anthropology from the University of Michigan and earned her medical doctorate at the The Ohio State University College of Medicine. 

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• Aslam Ejaz, MD Assistant Professor of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology

  Dr. Ejaz is an assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Surgical Oncology. A strong clinical practice, participation in the education of medical students and surgical trainees, and dedicated efforts in clinical research are the cornerstones of his academic surgery practice.

  As a practicing complex general surgical oncologist, Dr. Ejaz’s clinical practice is focused on the treatment of patients with liver, biliary, pancreas, and other gastrointestinal malignancies through innovative, minimally invasive robotic surgery techniques. As a health services researcher, his research efforts are focused on assessing and improving the delivery of high-value cancer care. He is involved in the development of several clinical trials focused on a multidisciplinary and personalized approach to cancer care.

  Dr. Ejaz earned his Master of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2014 and received his medical degree from the Howard University College of Medicine in 2010. His career goal is to become an independent, funded investigator by developing, evaluating, and implementing evidenced-based innovative approaches for patients who require major cancer surgery.

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• Samilia Obeng-Gyasi, MD Assistant Professor, Division of Surgical Oncology

  Dr. Obeng-Gyasi is a physician specializing in surgical oncology with The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. She attended the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She completed her residency at the Cleveland Clinic and a fellowship at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

• John Oliver DeLancey, MD Assistant Professor, Department of Urology

  Dr. DeLancey is an assistant professor in the Department of Urology. His research interests include hospital and provider quality ratings, tobacco cessation, and use of patient-reported outcomes to improve quality of care.
   
  Dr. DeLancey completed his MPH in epidemiology at Emory University and worked as a cancer epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society prior to completing his MD at the University of Michigan and Urology residency at Northwestern University.

• Catherine Quatman-Yates, PT, DPT, PhD Assistant Professor of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences

  Dr. Quatman-Yates is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and Director for the Leading Improvement-Focused Teams for Advancing Health System Outcomes Lab (LIFT Lab). She is a physical therapist and researcher who focuses on health services research topics such as continuous-learning health systems to improve outcomes, effective fall prevention at home, increasing physical literacy in patients, and physical therapy evaluation and interventions after mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). Dr. Quatman-Yates leverages systems thinking/modeling and various investigative and analytic approaches to work toward ongoing improvement of patient outcomes for a variety of injuries and conditions.
   
  Dr. Quatman-Yates received her bachelor’s degree in Health and Physical Education from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, her MA and PhD in Sport and Exercise Management from The Ohio State University, and her DPT from the University of Toledo. She is diversely trained in the philosophies and methods for a variety of inquiry paradigms including classic experimental and quasi-experimental designs, naturalistic/qualitative approaches, complexity science approaches (e.g., social network analysis and non-linear time series analyses), and improvement/implementation science methods.

CATALYST affiliated faculty

• John F. P. Bridges, PhD Professor

  Dr. Bridges is a professor in the departments of Biomedical Informatics and Surgery at The Ohio State University. In addition to his role as part of CATALYST, he is a core faculty member with the Center for Surgical Health Assessment, Research and Policy (SHARP). His research furthers the translation and implementation of heathcare advances into medical practice, and he has worked to demonstrate the value of incorporating patient and caregiver viewpoints into the consideration of both the risks and benefits of treatment options. In addition to his work advancing the science of patient engagement, Dr. Bridges founded a journal, The Patient – Patient Centered Outcomes Research, as a venue dedicated to comprehending patient perspectives in medicine. Dr. Bridges earned a PhD in economics from the City University of New York Graduate Center.

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• Jennifer Hefner, PhD, MPH Assistant Professor

  Dr. Hefner is an assistant professor in the Division of Health Management and Policy in the Ohio State College of Public Health, having received both her Master of Public Health and Ph.D. in health services organization and policy from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on applying management and organizational theories to the study of health care transformation in hospital settings. Currently, Dr. Hefner is working on understanding management strategies that are effective in reducing health care-associated infections, evaluating health care quality measures and studying the impact of patient portals on health care workflow.

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• C. Tory Hogan, PhD Assistant Professor

  Dr. Hogan is an assistant professor in the College of Public Health's Division of Health Services Management and Policy and holds a joint appointment with the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Dr. Hogan is currently exploring research on the relationship between management structures and patient quality outcomes, utilizing mixed methods. Her previous researched focused on hospital integration and performance using mixed methods. Dr. Hogan received her PhD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in health services administration.

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• Peter Kneuertz, MD Assistant Professor, Division of Thoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery

  Dr. Kneuertz is a thoracic surgeon with The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. He received his medical degree from the University of Cologne Medical Faculty in Cologne, Germany. His residencies took place at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore and the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, and he completed his fellowship with the Weill Cornell & Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

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• Susan Moffatt-Bruce, MD, PhD, MBA CEO of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada

  Dr. Moffatt-Bruce is the CEO of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, a cardiothoracic surgeon, a research scientist, and an academic administrator. The Royal College is the national professional association that oversees the medical education and certification of specialists in Canada and the accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools. Dr. Moffatt-Bruce started her role as CEO in January 2020.
  
  Dr. Moffatt-Bruce previously served as the Executive Director of University Hospital at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. In addition to her medical degree from Dalhousie University and completion of a cardiothoracic surgery fellowship at Stanford University, she earned an MBA and a master’s in operational excellence from The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business as well as a PhD from the University of Cambridge. From 2010 to 2017, she served as the chief quality and patient safety officer at Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center.
  
  In collaboration with Drs. Ann Scheck McAlearney and Timothy Huerta, Dr. Moffatt-Bruce secured a $4 million grant to develop a patient safety learning laboratory at the medical center, the Institute for the Design of Environments Aligned for Patient Safety (IDEA4PS) from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). This “learning laboratory” is studying how feedback of information can be used to inform the development of robust practices that lead to improved patient safety.

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CATALYST research staff

• Gennaro Di Tosto, PhD

  Dr. Di Tosto is a post-doctoral researcher collaborating on CATALYST’s health care analytics initiatives across several projects. His current work explores innovative methods for leveraging analytics and data science to improve health care delivery. His interdisciplinary background includes projects using computational and simulation methods for the study of collective behavior. Dr. Di Tosto holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Padova, Italy, and has conducted research in learning analytics at The Ohio State University. 

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• Pallavi Jonnalagadda, MBBS, DrPH

  Dr. Jonnalagadda is a post-doctoral researcher working with Drs. Naleef Fareed and Saurabh Rahurkar. Her current projects using big data approaches to examine the role of health information technology in improving outcomes pertaining to public health, health care delivery, and health care practices. Her research interests include data science, social determinants of health, and evaluation of policies and interventions. She received a doctorate in public health and master's degree in public health in epidemiology from the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh.

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• Sarah MacEwan, PhD

  Dr. MacEwan is a post-doctoral researcher in CATALYST. Her research interests focus on the use of health information technologies to enhance patient engagement and improve patient care. Her current projects examine health literacy and patient education, patient-reported outcomes, and health disparities related to the access and use of health information technology tools. Dr. MacEwan received her PhD from Duke University in biomedical engineering. Before joining CATALYST, she conducted postdoctoral research in molecular engineering at the University of Chicago.

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• Karen Shiu-Yee, PhD, MPH

  Dr. Shiu-Yee is a post-doctoral researcher with CATALYST. Her research interests focus on collaborating with medical providers and health systems to advance equitable health care and reduce health disparities. Dr. Shiu-Yee has expertise in using quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate health improvement projects within academia, hospital systems, nonprofit and community-based organizations, local health departments, and private businesses. She received her PhD in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University and holds an MPH in infectious disease and vaccinology from the University of California, Berkeley.

   

• Priti Singh, PhD, MS

  Dr. Singh is a post-doctoral researcher with CATALYST. Her areas of interest include health care and community-based research, and she works with Dr. Naleef Fareed on projects pertaining to social determinants of health such as the Ohio Opportunity Index and Ohio Equity Institute. 

  Dr. Singh graduated with a PhD in educational statistics and measurement with a minor in public health from the University of Toledo. She has a master's degree in pharmaceutics and pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Toledo and a bachelor's degree in pharmacy from the University of Mumbai, India.

• Alison Aldrich, MSI, MPH

  Alison Aldrich, MSI, MPH. Alison is a senior research data analytics specialist for CATALYST. She received a Master of Science in Information degree from the University of Michigan and a Master of Public Health from Wright State University. Alison worked for several years as an academic health sciences librarian. She provides research and publication support for CATALYST, as well as leadership for the PCORI taxonomy project.

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• Sadie Chen, MLIS

  Sadie is a resource planning analyst. She received a Master of Library and Information Science from Kent State University and completed her graduate school practicum at Mount Carmel West Health Sciences Library in Columbus, Ohio. Sadie worked for several years as a librarian, taxonomist, and digital archivist. She is the project manager for the Ohio State instance of Eagle-i, which is an online research resource repository. She also does qualitative coding for the HEALing Communities Study grant.

• Lindsey Sova, MPH

  Lindsey received her Master of Public Health from The Ohio State University. She is a project manager for CATALYST and is responsible for overseeing daily operations of studies as well as supervising research staff and students. Lindsey brings prior expertise as a research assistant in both academic and practice settings. She provides project management for the team’s MEDTAPP projects and MyChart/patient portals research activities. She previously acted as the implementation lead for HT2 and provided project management for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Taxonomy Project.

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• Christine Swoboda, PhD, MS

  Dr. Swoboda is a research scientist in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Her research interests include behavior change interventions for chronic disease prevention and treatment, and the effects of health behaviors on risk reduction. Her current research involves improving data collection and reporting for community-level infant mortality prevention programs across Ohio. Dr. Swoboda received her PhD from The Ohio State University in human nutrition and her Master of Science from SUNY University at Buffalo.

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• Seth Scarborough, MAS

  Seth received his master’s degree in applied statistics from The Ohio State University. He is a research data analyst for CATALYST and is responsible for cleaning and analyzing data across a number of projects. Currently, Seth is working with survey data from the HT2 and TEAM projects.

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• Natasha Kurien, MPH

  Natasha received her Bachelor of Arts in chemistry and biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University and her Master of Public Health from Dartmouth College. She works with the qualitative team on research and analysis. She is a part of various projects including Total Engagement and Activation Measure (TEAM), the HEALing Communities Study, Opioid Innovation Fund, HT2, and projects related to pancreas cancer patient quality of care.

• Jaclyn Volney, MPH

  Jaclyn received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Public Health at The Ohio State University. She conducts qualitative coding on CATALYST’s projects including the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) project. She also assists with managing transcription projects across CATALYST studies.
  

   

   

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• Hannah Blumenfeld

  Hannah is a clinical research assistant for CATALYST. She recently graduated from The Ohio State University with her Bachelor of Science in Public Health. She will assist on various CATALYST projects, including the STOP-COVID and SMART studies.

• Tyler Griesenbrock

  Tyler is a communication specialist with more than a decade of experience as an editor, designer, and web producer. As the scientific editor for CATALYST, he is responsible for projects such as developing Tableau dashboards and their accompanying documentation; creating paper and web-based forms for data submission; editing and designing graphics for grant applications and publications; and creating articles, flyers, and videos to explain the work done at the center. He served as the assistant editor for Volume 19 of Advances in Health Care Management and is responsible for updating and maintaining the CATALYST website as well as other associated websites. In addition, he serves on the communication, dashboard, and portal teams for the HEALing Communities Study. Tyler received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Dayton, and he spent 10 years in the newspaper industry.

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• Pam Thompson

  Pam is the Administrative Assistant for CATALYST. She has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from The Ohio State University and provides administrative support to the core faculty within the center. Pam is responsible for processing all travel and purchasing requests as well as coordinating calendars for meetings. She also assists in various other administrative tasks to support the team's research goals.