RESEARCH

In this project, we will develop new statistical approaches to detect serious adverse events that can happen after vaccination, and we will apply these new approaches to existing data from a large health care system to evaluate COVID-19 vaccine safety.

The primary objective of this study is to identify immunization providers’ opinions on practice patterns, barriers and facilitators for Gardasil 3-dose regimen completion among those who initiated the Gardasil vaccine.

The goal of this mixed methods study is to develop and test interventions to reduce use of surveillance biomarkers for early stage breast cancer patients.

The overall goal of this mixed-method, phased evaluation approach is to document the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from implementation of the Focus Home ecosystem components, and to document the process and outcome measures for key system end-users including patients, family caregivers, and clinicians as the service, IT, and population management data analytical features of the ecosystem goes live over the next two years. 

We currently do not have a coordinated, effective, and scalable strategy to meet the ongoing medical and social needs of persons living with dementia (PLWD) and their families in KPSC. The goals of this project are: 1) better understand the patterns of diagnosis and care for patients with dementia, mild cognitive impairment and memory loss to identify potential improvement opportunities and 2) to generate preliminary data towards testing an integrated home-based care model for PLWD and their family caregivers.

This study will incorporate the voice of the patient and provider stakeholders as part of the implementation of the Zero Suicide framework in three health settings from the NIMH-funded parent award as well as the Southcentral Foundation which is an Alaska Native-owned, nonprofit health care organization serving nearly 65,000 American Indian/Alaskan Native people living in and around Anchorage, Alaska. Our scientific premise is that by 1) understanding the stakeholder perspective on the role of health systems in opioid-related overdoses, and 2) involving these stakeholders in all aspects of developing strategies that health systems can use to prevent opioid-related overdoses within the implementation of the Zero Suicide framework, we will have a much greater impact on reducing the mortality rates associated with opioid use.

Effective treatments for severe obesity are particularly needed in racial/ethnic minority populations. Rates of severe obesity are as high as 36% for middle-aged non-Hispanic black women compared to 16% for their white counterparts in the U.S. Research on bariatric weight loss outcomes among racial/ethnic minorities is limited. What evidence does exist suggests that black patients consistently lose less weight than whites over 2–3 years of follow-up. The evidence for differences between Hispanic and white or black bariatric patients is equivocal. Hispanic patients have been shown to lose more, less, or the same amount of weight as non-Hispanic black and white patients. Across studies, the disparities in % total weight loss vary from less than 2% to 10%. This variability is twice as much as the amount of weight loss considered clinically meaningful. This study will extend the work done by our team during the Bariatric Experience Long-Term (BELONG) study which addressed how self-reported behavioral, psychosocial, and perceived environmental factors predicted weight loss over 3 years following gastric bypass and sleeve. Patients (n = 1,975) were 41% Hispanic, 17% non-Hispanic black, and 37% non-Hispanic white. The proposed study will expand the work of BELONG by incorporating: 1) A focus on weight regain during 3-5 years after surgery; 2) measures shown to contribute to health disparities in severe obesity (vigilant coping style and internalized racism); and 3) innovative qualitative methods (photo-elicitation and ethnography) to understand the patient experience.

The purpose of this mixed-methods study is to examine perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines among health care providers, willingness to receive and recommend COVID-19 vaccine, drivers of vaccine hesitancy, and needs for tailored interventions to support confidence in COVID-19 vaccines among health care providers and community members.

The goal of this study is to gain insight and understanding into planned and implemented processes of survivorship care in diverse health care settings.