ACCELERAT

Raj Chovatiya is Assistant Professor in the Department of Dermatology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. He received his MD and PhD in immunobiology from Yale University in 2016. He completed his internal medicine internship at Yale in 2017, followed by dermatology residency at Northwestern in 2020. In his last year of residency training, while serving as Chief Resident, Dr. Chovatiya was a NRSA postdoctoral fellow. Dr. Chovatiya’s area of clinical expertise is chronic inflammatory skin disease including atopic dermatitis (AD), eczema, itch, psoriasis, hidradenitis, pemphigoid, and vitiligo – especially among individuals with skin of color. He directs the Center for Eczema and Itch in the Department of Dermatology. His research project will focus on implementing patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in routine care for atopic dermatitis patients and developing a learning health systems framework that can be expanded to other chronic inflammatory skin diseases. In particular, his research aims to elucidate patient and physician perspectives regarding use of PROs in AD clinical care, validate and implement PROs in the clinical setting for standard-of-care management of AD, and drive a comprehensive care management program incorporating PROs in shared decision making across dermatology clinics.

Jennifer Hoffmann, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Lurie Children’s Hospital. She received her MD from Northwestern University in 2013, completed residency in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center, and completed fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Hoffmann’s research aims to develop quality measures for acute agitation management in the emergency department that are informed by multidisciplinary perspectives including patients and families. She will field test the developed measures to determine whether a quality improvement initiative driven by clinical decision support improves quality of care for acute agitation management in youth in the emergency department. The results of her study will inform the development of national quality measures for pediatric mental health emergencies.

Project Title: Transitioning a Shared Decision Making Dashboard to Telemedicine Clinical Encounters

Dr. Mohindra is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology. She is a medical oncologist at the Robert H. Lurie Cancer Center of Northwestern University specializing in the treatment of lung cancer. She received her Internal Medicine and Hematology/Oncology training at the McGaw Center of Northwestern University. Her clinical research has focused on clinical trials of novel therapeutics in lung cancer patients and efforts to improve care delivery. Her research project will focus on how to adapt and utilize a shared decision-making dashboard during telemedicine visits. The dashboard incorporates patient-reported outcome measures and clinical factors to enhance patient-centered, shared decision-making and health co-production between patients and clinicians. The overarching goal is to align health care service delivery with patient and family needs, goals, and values in the context of what is medically achievable. Dr. Mohindra will specifically focus on how to utilize and optimize this dashboard during telemedicine visits.

Project Title: A regional learning health system approach to substance use disorder care among the Cook County adult probation population

Dr. Juleigh Nowinski Konchak is an Addiction Medicine and Public Health/Preventive medicine physician at Cook County Health (CCH) in Chicago, IL. She serves as a physician advisor for CCH’s substance use disorder (SUD) programming, including medications for addiction treatment (MAT), and is the Associate Program Director for the Public Health/General Preventive Medicine Residency Program with CCH and Northwestern. She received her MD from University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, completed her residency in Public Health/General Preventive Medicine with the Cook County Health/Northwestern University program, and received her MPH and Certificate in Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety from Northwestern University. Juleigh is a first year scholar focused on improving access to evidence-based SUD treatment for individuals involved in community corrections. Through a regional learning health system approach, this effort aims to support sustained systems improvement through multi-sector collaboration, elevate the patient voice to drive culture change, and address inequities in opioid-related fatality and access to evidence-based SUD care.

Project Title: School-Based Asthma Management in Chicago Public Schools: An Implementation Science-Based Approach to Coordinated Asthma Care

Andrea A. Pappalardo, MD is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Sleep and Allergy at the University of Illinois at Chicago--UI Health. She received her BA from Washington University in St. Louis, her MD from University of Illinois at Chicago, completed a combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency at University of Chicago, and a fellowship in Allergy/Immunology at Rush University Medical Center and Cook County Hospital. She has been practicing clinical allergy immunology across the lifespan in a variety of settings including: urban, suburban and community practice for over ten years. She is the Medical Director of the Mobile Care Chicago Asthma and Allergy Program, and the Medical Director of CHECK, a care coordination program for Medicaid recipients in Illinois. Dr. Pappalardo is now shifting her career focus to improving healthcare access through implementation-science based healthcare innovation.  Her K12 project is to assess school-based asthma management practices in Chicago Public Schools and pilot a stock inhalers program in select Chicago schools with demonstrated high asthma burden. Health equity is central to Dr. Pappalardo's work as she focuses on health-related policy implementation, such as stock inhalers for schools, for communities state-wide that aim to provide critical medication access to all with respiratory symptoms during the school day.

Project Title: Universal Implementation of a Substance Use Screening & Intervention Service in a Pediatric Hospital Using a Learning Health Systems Framework

Faith Summersett Williams, PhD, is an Assistant Professor with dual faculty appointments in the Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She received her PhD in 2018 and MS in 2016 from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She works as a pediatric psychologist at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital where she provides mental health support for the division’s growing Substance Use and Prevention Program. Faith is a first year scholar focused on establishing a system-wide standard of care within a pediatric hospital. In particular, she will examine the feasibility and effectiveness of an evidence-based substance use screening and treatment intervention in the inpatient hospital setting with a particularly vulnerable pediatric population – youth with chronic medical conditions who are at high-risk for secondary substance use disorder and health-related complications of substance use. The results of this study will inform the extension of this intervention to other settings such as outpatient clinics and school-based settings where children and adolescents also seek care and services.

Project Title: Implementing and testing heart failure patient-reported outcomes measures in a learning health system

Faraz Ahmad, MD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine (Cardiology) and the Department of Preventive Medicine (Health and Biomedical Informatics) in the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He received his MD from the University of Chicago in 2009 and MS in Health and Biomedical Informatics from Northwestern University in 2017. He completed his residency at the University of Pennsylvania and fellowships at Northwestern University. Faraz is a first year scholar focused on enhancing the clinical utility of a novel, heart failure patient-reported outcome measure (the PROMIS-Plus-HF Profile Measure) using innovative health measurement science approaches and on optimizing the integration of the patient-reported outcomes measures into the routine care of patients with heart failure using principles from implementation science as part of the NM PRO initiative.

Project Title: Integrating Patient-Reported Outcomes and Remote Patient Sensor Data in Childhood Asthma

Kristin Kan, MD is an Instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at Lurie Children’s Hospital. She received her MD from Johns Hopkins University in 2010 and an MPH in 2009. She completed her residency at the University of Washington in 2013 and received her MSc in Health Services Research from the University of Michigan in 2016. Kristin is a first year scholar focused on the integration of patient-reported outcomes and remote patient sensor data in childhood asthma. The results of this study will influence how to best design future version(s) of this technology-enhanced intervention, aimed to optimize health providers’ support of asthma self-management and families’ asthma-related, self-efficacy and quality of life.

Project Title: Development of a Novel, Post-Surgical, Post-Discharge Complication Monitoring and Adaptive Intervention System Using Tailored Patient Reported Outcomes

Ryan Merkow, MD is an Assistant Professor of Surgery in Northwestern Quality Improvement, Research, & Education in Surgery at Feinberg School of Medicine. He received his MD from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in 2007 and his MS in Health Services and Outcomes Research from Northwestern University in 2012. He completed his residency in surgery at the University of Chicago in 2015, and advanced fellowship training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2017. Ryan is a first year scholar focused on the development of a novel, post-surgical, post-discharge complication monitoring and adaptive intervention system using tailored patient reported outcomes. The results of his study will improve care for patients during one of the most vulnerable and high risk periods after major cancer surgery, and build the infrastructure to generalize the monitoring system to other areas of surgery.

Hale Thompson, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2016, his MS in Epidemiology from the University of Minnesota in 2011, and his MA in Sociology from the University of Illinois in 1995. Hale is a first-year scholar conducting research to address health disparities with a systems-level intervention to identify and treat opioid misuse. The results of his study will inform the replication and adaptation of the intervention at other medical centers.