Networking Lunch: Training and Career Development

Professor, Department of Family Medicine
Dr. Holtrop is Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the University of Colorado Department of Family Medicine and Associate Director and Senior Implementation Scientist with the Adult and Child Consortium for Health Outcomes Research and Delivery Science (ACCORDS) at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She also is a Senior Scientific Advisor for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for dissemination and implementation science and primary care research.

Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Anschutz Medical Campus
Bethany Kwan, PhD, MSPH, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Anschutz Medical Campus. She received her PhD in social psychology from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2010, following a MSPH from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in 2005. She holds a BS in Chemistry and Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University (’01). As an investigator in the University of Colorado’s Adult & Child Consortium for Health Outcomes Research and Delivery Science (ACCORDS), she conducts pragmatic, patient-centered research and evaluation on health and health care in a variety of areas. With an emphasis on stakeholder engagement and dissemination and implementation (D&I) methods, her work addresses the integration of physical and behavioral health, chronic disease self-management, improving processes and systems of care to achieve the Quadruple Aim, pragmatic trials using electronic health data, and enhancing quality of life for patients and care partners. She works with patients and other stakeholders at all phases of research, from prioritization, to design, implementation, and dissemination of research. She mentors and teaches students, trainees, and fellow faculty on Designing for Dissemination to ensure that research innovations are efficiently and effectively adopted, used, and sustained in real world settings to improve health and well-being for all. Dr. Kwan directs the ACCORDS Education program as well as the Colorado Clinical & Translational Sciences Institute (CCTSI) Dissemination & Implementation Research Core.

Associate Professor, Clinician-Investigator, Division of General Internal Medicine University of Colorado
Dr. Huebschmann began her education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earning a BS in Environmental Engineering. She earned her medical degree in 2000 from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and completed her residency at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Continuing her education, most recently she earned an MS in Clinical Sciences in 2015 at the University of Colorado. Dr. Huebschmann is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine with the Division of General Internal Medicine and the Center for Women’s Health Research. She is funded by a K23 career development award from the National Heart Lung Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and was previously funded by a KL2 award from the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. Her overarching research goal is to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease in people with type 2 diabetes by overcoming barriers to physical activity and by optimally controlling other cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension. To achieve this overarching goal, Dr. Huebschmann seeks to work with clinics and communities to implement evidence-based programs to promote physical activity for people with Type 2 Diabetes.

Research Assistant Professor, Department of Bioastistics and Informatics
Krithika Suresh is a research assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Informatics in the Colorado School of Public Health. She received her MMath in Biostatistics from the University of Waterloo, and her PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Michigan. Her research interests include survival analysis, longitudinal data, joint modeling, and prediction models, with applications in cancer research and other health outcomes.

Research Assistant Professor, Department of Biostatistics and Informations
Dr. John Rice is an assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Informatics in the Colorado School of Public Health. He received his MSPH in Biostatistics from Emory University in 2010, and his PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Michigan in 2015, where his dissertation focused on statistical methods for cancer research. He completed postdoctoral training at the University of Rochester in 2017, where he worked in the areas of HIV testing behavior and cardiovascular outcomes, prior to joining the faculty at UC Denver. His research interests include longitudinal data analysis, recurrent events, and semiparametric regression methods for binary and sem​icontinuous outcomes data.

Assistant professor in the Colorado School of Public Health
Dr. Juarez-Colunga is an assistant professor in the Colorado School of Public Health. She received her BS in Applied Mathematics and MSc in Statistics in Mexico, and her doctoral degree in Statistics from Simon Fraser University in Canada. Elizabeth’s areas of expertise and interest include: (i) analysis of data with dependencies at different levels including longitudinal and clustered data, which builds upon generalized linear and nonlinear mixed models, (ii) analysis of repeated events data such as pulmonary exacerbations, which evolve as extension of survival analysis methods, (iii) joint modeling of multiple outcomes, and (iv) analysis of observational data. She has been involved in the design and analysis of several health outcomes research studies, including for instance, the The Scalable Architecture for Federated Translational Inquiries Network (SAFTINet) project, a pragmatic trial to assist weight loss in a low-income population, and several observational studies in surgical outcomes.

Founding Director of ACCORDS
Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the Colorado School of Public Health
Dr. Allison Kempe, MD, MPH, is the founding Director of ACCORDS. She is a tenured Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the Colorado School of Public Health and has conducted health services, outcomes, and implementation/dissemination research for over thirty years. She has extensive experience in conducting pragmatic trials, in program evaluation and in the conduct of surveys, with over 200 publications focusing on improving health care and health care delivery. Finding and testing methods of improving immunization rates and other preventive care delivery and decreasing disparities in health and health care delivery for children have been the major focus of her own research. She has received numerous R01 level grants from NIH, AHRQ, and the CDC throughout her career. Additionally, Dr. Kempe has played a major mentorship role for many fellows and junior faculty. She directed two federally funded primary care research fellowships for over 10 years and developed a fellowship for surgical and subspecialty faculty who wish to become outcomes or health services researchers. Currently, she is a Co-Director of a K12 from NHLBI that focuses on implementation and dissemination science.

Assistant professor, Department of Family Medicine and Public Health
Dr. Borsika Rabin is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health at the School of Medicine, University of California San Diego where she also serves as the co-Director of the UC San Diego D&I Science Center. Dr. Rabin serves as the co-lead of the Implementation Core for the Triple Aim QUERI Program for Denver VA and an Implementation Scientist at the Center of Excellence in Stress and Mental Health at the San Diego VA. She is a member of the ACCORDS Dissemination and Implementation Science Program at the University of Colorado. Her research focuses on dissemination and implementation (D&I) of evidence-based interventions, adaptations, measurement, and the evaluation and development of interactive, web-based interventions and tools with a special emphasis on tools that can support planning for D&I interventions. She designed and developed a number of web-based resources including the D&I Models in Research and Practice (www.dissemination-implementation.org) websites.

Project Lead, Patient-Researcher
Liz Salmi is a former punk rock drummer turned brain cancer patient who now co-leads the Brain Cancer Quality of Life Collaborative. Established with support from PCORI in 2017, the Brain Cancer Quality of Life Collaborative has a mission to meaningfully engage diverse stakeholders (including patients and care partners) in the prioritization, design, and conduct of research that improves the quality of life for people with malignant brain tumors. In addition to the collaborative, Liz is now Senior Strategist of Research Dissemination for OpenNotes at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.