Health Services Research Sampler

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At Emory, health services research (HSR) ranges across a wide swath of disciplines and topics with a broad base of investigators, educational programs, and health-related partnerships. Here is a small sample of ongoing projects from across the health sciences. 

In the area of health policy and economics:

• Ken Thorpe, Robert W. Woodruff Professor and Chair of Health Policy and Management, analyzes health care costs and financing associated with chronic disease and obesity. He founded the Rollins School of Public Health’s Center for Health Outcomes and Quality. And as founder and executive director of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Diseases, Thorpe currently advocates for the implementation of evidence-based programs to prevent diabetes and for care coordination in Medicare programs. His blog is available at fightchronicdisease.org/blog/ken-thorpe.  

• Kathleen Adams, professor of health policy and management at the Rollins School of Public Health and a health economist at CDC, analyzes Medicaid costs attributable to smoking during pregnancy and cost-effectiveness of increased prenatal care.  

Related to health care delivery:

• The Emory Program in Critical Care examines disparities in care delivery in hospitals.  

• Theresa Gillespie, a researcher at the Winship Cancer Institute, has a $1 million CDC grant to study health disparities and informed decision-making among prostate cancer patients.  

• The Georgia Coverdell Stroke Registry seeks to improve outcomes after acute stroke by facilitating data collection in a 62-hospital collaborative.  

• Among the growing number of faculty involved in research on new ways to deliver care are Napthali Edge, director of transition management for the Emory Clinic (who facilitates better transitions as patients move from one health care institution to another or from one service to another within an institution) as well as Jeff Lesesne, chief of primary care for Emory Healthcare, and internists Jennifer Zreloff and Jason Higdon (who are working to create a “medical home” for each patient enrolled in a patient-centered primary care program).  

In looking at the impact of education:

• Emory Healthcare’s training programs have had a significant impact on increased knowledge and implementation of quality improvement measures through the system.  

In considering outcomes of patient care:

• The Atlanta Clinical & Translational Science Institute (ACTSI), funded by the NIH, is one of 60 sites that work to improve the way biomedical research is conducted across the country.  

• Emory Healthcare quality improvement projects have boosted Emory’s hospitals into the top 10 in national quality measures.

• The Emory-Georgia Tech Predictive Health Institute combines an interdisciplinary research core with a clinical testing ground to find new predictive biomarkers of health, disease risk, and prognosis. Its goal is to keep people healthy and develop a new model of health care services. (See predictivehealth.emory.edu). Participants in the institute's demonstration program, the Center for Health Discovery and Well Being, use findings to develop personalized plans for optimal health. (See predictivehealth.emory.edu/chd.)  

• The Emory Program in Cardiovascular Outcomes Research and Epidemiology (EPICORE), with multidisciplinary researchers from across the campus and city, maintains one of the nation’s first and largest cardiovascular databases. Research includes novel biomarkers for heart disease, outcomes research, genetic epidemiology, and mind-body interactions. For example, EPICORE director Viola Vaccarino studies depression as a risk factor, both for developing heart disease and for faring worse after a heart attack than those without depression.  

• Rheumatologist and epidemiologist Sam Lim is studying outcomes for patients with lupus.  

• Internist and epidemiologist Venkat Narayan and endocrinologist and cardiologist Peter Wilson are combining expertise to study patient outcomes for diabetes complications.  

• Nurse Sandra Dunbar looks at how to reduce caregiver stress and improve quality of life for heart failure patients with diabetes.  

• When it comes to assessing comparative clinical effectiveness for better health outcomes, missing or misclassified data can skew results, damaging studies’ potential to help patients. Biostatistician Robert Lyles leads a federally funded study of biostatistical methods to deal with this problem.  

• Emory HSR researchers at the Atlanta VA Medical Center, an increasingly big player in HSR nationwide, include endocrinologist Lawrence Phillips, who studies predictors of diabetes, and rehabilitation medicine Andrew Butler, who places robots—monitored remotely through telemedicine—in the homes of people who have suffered strokes to speed delivery of rehab services.

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