News
CRN-CCRC Welcomes Kathy Mazor as Co-Director
Kathy Mazor, EdD, has joined Jim Dearing as Co-Director of the CRN Cancer Communication Research Center. Kathy is Associate Professor of Medicine in the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She conducts research about patient-physician communication, adverse events in cancer care, and health literacy. Her training is in psychometrics and health services research, with her doctorate from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Kathy's appointment in the CCRC is the most prominent of several internal and external changes that we are implementing in the fall of 2011. Together, these changes will better position the CCRC to lead and conduct outstanding research about cancer communication in clinical settings, including the related issues of team-based care coordination, decision aids and tools, organizational learning and healthcare improvement, and dissemination, diffusion, and implementation of evidence-based innovations.
We are founding three Scientific Programs in the CCRC that group and provide coherence to these and other of the CCRC's research projects. These are Patient-Centered Communication and Care Coordination Research, led by Kathy; Product Development and Implementation Science Research, led by Borsika Rabin; and Designing for Diffusion Research, led by Jim Dearing. These new groupings of studies that are underway give shape to ideas fomented at our 2010 and 2011 annual meetings in Denver and Boston, as well as to the suggestions by our former Discovery and Dissemination Cores.
We are convinced that these changes, along with a cadre of new research partnerships (including the largest cross-CECCR research collaboration to-date, with the University of Wisconsin, Robert Hawkins PI) with researchers at a range of universities will well position us for the future of cancer communication research within the Federal government, for the coming evolution of the CRN under the direction of Larry Kushi, and for path-breaking science in our three foci.
KPCO Begins Work on CHESS Study
KP Colorado's Cancer Communication Research Center has received a research grant from the U.S. National Cancer Institute to implement and study the effects of CHESS, a dynamic E-Health breast cancer support website. CHESS has previously been shown in randomized controlled trials to help women who are in the early stages of learning that they have breast cancer. Alanna Kulchak Rahm, PhD, and James Dearing, PhD, lead the study for KPCO, which is partnering to implement CHESS with Exempla St. Joseph's Hospital. The overall project is led by Robert Hawkins of the University of Wisconsin. This three year R01 study is the latest in a series of studies that have implemented the CHESS system into major health care organizations.
Research team members in the KPCO Institute for Health Research are Breanne Barela, Jim Dearing, Erica Morse, and Alanna Kulchak Rahm.
"This project is really inspiring," said Bre Barela, Project Coordinator at KPCO for the CHESS study. "and we get to learn much more by working with both patients and our doctors and nurses." Dr. Rahm added that studies like CHESS are partnerships that are somewhat novel for healthcare organizations. "The emphasis is on implementation and on dissemination. Hopefully we'll provide real solutions to real problems."
CHESS, the Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System, provides women with information from expert sources, treatment news, and social support from other patients. The system was developed by David H. Gustafson, PhD, who found that individuals with personal distress are more likely to "talk" with a computer than a person. CHESS has been shown to
1. Improve patients' quality of
life
2. Reduce demands on physician time
3. In some cases, reduce the cost of care, and
4. Be used equally, although in different ways, by all types
of people including women, older people, low-income people, people
with less education and minorities.
CHESS provides a variety of services to individuals, including information, communication, journaling, personal stories, Ask an Expert, and video galleries. CHESS differs from other Internet sites in that it is a secure site where only individuals who have been diagnosed with a particular illness can access to communicate with others who have the same diagnosis or contact a physician. Additionally, the information provided on the site is written and reviewed by doctors from that specialty and is tailored to patients. The Denver study will provide Denver-specific resources to women using the system.
In this "real-world" study, after their diagnosis of breast cancer, patients will receive a phone call from a care coordinator who provides care information and information on local resources. The coordinator will recommend CHESS where the patient will have a login name and password. The goal of this study is to assess feasibility and utilization from both the patient and provider perspectives. Positive results will mean that CHESS will become part of standard care in the two Denver healthcare organizations.
The Journal of Health Communication Marks Its 100th Issue
In celebration of the 100th Issue of Journal of Health Communication, Volume 17, Issue 1, 2012 is available for FREE to read and download for a limited time!
Kill Peer Review or Reform It?
Click here to read the article.
A Framework to Facilitate the Use of Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses in the Design of Primary Research Studies
Click here to read the article.
Transcript: Patient-Centeredness in Policy and Practice: A Conference on Evidence, Programs, and Implications
Click here to read the transcript.
Revisiting Issues, Drawbacks and Opportunities with Observational Studies in Comparative Effectiveness Research
Click here to read the article.
Enriching Patient-Centered Care in Serious Illness: A Focus on Patients' Experiences of Agency
Click here to read this journal article from The Milbank Quarterly.
From The Wall Street Journal: Risk of False Positives in Mammograms
Click here to read the article.
From The New York Times: Finding Little Comfort in the Statistics of Survival
Click here to read the article.
From The Oregonian: Study: Living in poor neighborhood can hurt health
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From NCI: Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants Could Alleviate Projected Oncology Workforce Shortage
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Will It Work Here? A Decisionmaker's Guide to Adopting Innovations
by Cindy Brach, AHRQ; Nancy Lenfestey, Amy Roussel,
Jacqueline Amoozegar, and Asta Sorenson, RTI International
The Guide helps users determine if an innovation would be a
good fit-or an appropriate stretch-for their health care
organization by asking a series of questions. It links users to
actionable Web-based tools and presents case studies that
illustrate how other organizations have addressed these
questions.
Click here to read more from the AHRQ
website
Click here to read the article
