Jefferson School of Population Health
Research Interest Groups
The Research team has convened several interest groups designed to stimulate new research ideas and to foster sharing of ideas among faculty and staff with shared interests.
Current groups, which generally meet at least monthly, include:
Employer Initiatives
Builds on JSPH's collaboration with the National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH) and the HealthCare21 Business Coalition in Tennessee in offering the College for Value Based Purchasing of Health Benefits (CVBP), a training program for employee benefit managers. The program teaches employers how to use their market power to demand quality and to work with payors and providers to achieve value in health care. CVBP has trained over 300 professionals since its founding in 2004, and program evaluation continues to be extremely positive. The employer research interest group was formed to foster CVBP evaluation and to identify other opportunities for JSPH to evaluate employer-based health and wellness, value-based purchasing, and benefits management initiatives. As a direct result, JSPH is currently supporting the evaluation needs of NBCH's diabetes seed grants program, and continues to seek employer partners for research and evaluation activities.
Healthy Aging Research Team
JSPH created the Healthy Aging Research Team (HART) to advance healthy aging research and inform education, policy and clinical practice related to population health. HART brings together JSPH’s extensive experience in research on aging and population health, with distinctive qualification in the critically important domains of access, quality of care, and quality of life. HART is interdisciplinary and is composed of professionals with extensive experience in aging research, education, policy and clinical practice.
The specific capabilities for HART include:
- Measuring the clinical, economic, and humanistic outcomes in aging populations
- Establishing metrics to enhance quality and safety across the aging care continuum
- Examining decision-making paradigms in palliative and end of life care
- Disseminating knowledge of best practices regarding healthy aging to key stakeholders including policy makers, clinicians, researchers, and consumers
- Investigating cultural relevance and health literacy in aging populations
- Developing and evaluating interventions designed to improve healthy aging and minimize the impact of chronic disease
- Addressing community built environment policies and programs to support healthy aging
- Promoting patient engagement, chronic care self-management, and adherence
Oncology Outcomes
The group seeks to identify opportunities through research to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of care for people with cancer. Areas of interest include: the cancer patient's needs from and perceptions of care; improving access to cancer screening and prevention services; measuring and improving care outcomes; and assessing costs of screening and treatment.
Global Climate Change and Health
Despite increased recognition that the global climate is changing, limited attention has been paid to implications for population health. This interest group is reviewing the existing literature in an attempt to identify new research opportunities. One of the group's first initiatives was pilot testing of a physician questionnaire seeking to identify the extent to which physicians are aware of global climate change and the theoretical and empirical evidence regarding health impact. The group also is exploring potential data sources and research designs for producing further evidence regarding the links between climate and adverse health outcomes.
