Awards & Accomplishments

HIP Investigator, Dr. Jennifer Weiss recently received funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for her research project, “Measuring Modality-specific Interval Colorectal Cancer Rates Across Healthcare Systems.” The goal of the project is to expand the existing definitions of interval colorectal cancers (cancers identified after a negative screening or surveillance exam and before the date of the next recommended exam). The project team will develop a measurement implementation strategy with standards for reporting that can be easily adopted and compared across healthcare systems.

HIP Investigators Christie Bartels (PI), Edmond Ramly (Co-I) and Heidi Brown (Co-I) received the 2020 ICTR Dissemination & Implementation Research Pilot Award for this project: Extending BP Connect: Implementing in diverse specialty clinics and for out-of-network follow-up

HIP Investigator, Dr. Elizabeth Cox in collaboration with the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ), Dr. Melissa Gilkey (University of North Carolina), and members of the PROKids team received a Carbone Cancer Center Rural Cancer Pilot Award. The project, “On-Time HPV Vaccination for Rural Wisconsin Youth” will help inform interventions at the healthcare system-level that focus on low rates of HPV vaccination in rural Wisconsin. The project will use WCHQ data to develop and validate metrics of on-time HPV vaccination initiation and completion in Wisconsin health systems.

HIP Investigator, Dr. Elizabeth Cox has been named the Associate Director of the Primary Care Research Fellowship. The fellowship is administered in the UW Department of Family medicine and Community Health and funded by HRSA. A principle objective is to train primary care physicians and PhD scientists interested in careers in medical research related to the organization, delivery, or effectiveness of primary health care and preventive medicine. The Primary Care Research Fellowship is among the oldest, most successful primary care research fellowships in the nation. Since 1993, it has trained more than 60 post-doctoral fellows for careers in primary care medical research at academic medical institutions.

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in Wisconsin. It is also the most preventable, yet least prevented cancer. Screening is important for early detection, but disparities in screening rates exist between Wisconsin clinics. HIP Investigator, Dr. Jen Weiss and a team of investigators received a research award through the Wisconsin Partnership Program Collaborative Health Sciences Program to identify strategies from high-performing clinics to improve colorectal cancer screening rates at low-performing clinics in rural and urban communities in Wisconsin. The long-term goal of the research is to decrease statewide colorectal cancer incidence and mortality.

The PROKids team, led by Elizabeth Cox, MD, PhD, received new NIH funding to develop standard guidance for the use of pediatric PROMIS metrics in ambulatory clinical populations.  In collaboration with leadership from prominent child health advocacy organizations and delivery systems nationally, as well as other PROMIS experts and the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research Dissemination and Implementation Program, PROKids will interview healthcare stakeholders to understand, and ultimately address in the guidance, the challenges and opportunities of assessing pediatric population health with patient-reported metrics.     

Dr. Pascale Carayon, the Procter & Gamble Bascom Professor in Total Quality in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Dr. Maureen Smith, professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Family Medicine & Community Health, were recently awarded $2.5 million from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to create a patient safety learning lab.

Dr. Andrew Quanbeck was recently awarded two 5-year NIH grants totaling nearly $5 million to implement interventions for preventing and treating substance misuse in primary care.

He will be collaborating with HIP on the project, “Promoting the implementation of clinical guidelines for opioid prescribing in primary care using systems consultation.” The project addresses the change needed in the U.S. regarding the opioid crisis and prescribing practices by determining how to implement safer prescribing practices as efficiently and effectively as possible in primary care clinics. 

Dr. Elizabeth Cox recently discussed the benefits that the UW Fall Research Competition has had on her research career in a UW-Madison news article. As a multi-time recipient of the award, Dr. Cox has found that the funding can be a great way to start new collaborations or support mentoring a graduate student. She has also used the funding to conduct a pilot test of an intervention to address barriers to self-management for youth and teens with type 1 diabetes, and then went on to secure a 3-year extramural award to evaluate the impact of the intervention in a multi-site randomized, controlled trial.

HIP Investigators Meghan Brennan, MD and Heidi Brown, MD were recently awarded pilot funding through the University of Wisconsin - Madison Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (UW ICTR).