CATALYST leadership

• Ann Scheck McAlearney, ScD, MS Executive Director of CATALYST

  Dr. McAlearney is the Executive Director of CATALYST and a professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine in Ohio State's College of Medicine. She also holds appointments as a professor of health services management and policy in the College of Public Health and professor of pediatrics in the College of Medicine at The Ohio State University. She has over 30 years of health services research experience and has been actively involved in both performing research and disseminating research results to academic and practitioner audiences.
  
  Dr. McAlearney enjoys collaborative research projects and engaging clinicians in health service research as well as mentoring junior faculty in their research endeavors. She has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications, 10 books/edited books and 80 book chapters. Dr. McAlearney’s ongoing research focuses on information technology innovations in health care, population health management, quality improvement and organizational development, and she is an expert in both qualitative and mixed methods analyses. Dr. McAlearney received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University and Harvard University’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

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• Alice Gaughan, MS Research Manager

  Alice Gaughan has over 20 years of experience performing research at The Ohio State University. She has extensive experience building strong relationships leading to successful collaborations between healthcare and research teams. She is passionate about performing research that results in impactful change for the benefit of patients. She serves as a Research Manager for CATALYST and also provides project management for the team’s research activities funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, including the Institute for the Design of Environments Aligned for Patient Safety (IDEA4PS).

  Before joining CATALYST, Alice served as a program coordinator in the Clinical Trials Office at Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, where she was responsible for the implementation of new clinical trials. She also spent time as a senior research associate in the Department of Veterinary Biosciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine. She started her research career in the College of Medicine at the Comprehensive Transplant Center, where she performed basic science, clinical, and translational studies aimed at understanding the mechanisms of transplant rejection. Alice received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Bethany College and a Master of Science degree in medical microbiology and immunology from Ohio State. 

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CATALYST core faculty

• Naleef Fareed, PhD, MBA Assistant Professor

  Dr. Fareed is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. He leverages his training in health services research to primarily explore how the adoption, implementation, and use of health information technologies influence healthcare delivery. He also conducts studies that assess the effects of policies, interventions, and strategies on healthcare outcomes. His recent work incorporates the patient perspective and methods through which technology can be used to collect patient data. His work has been published and presented in highly regarded venues in the health services research field.
  
  Prior to joining the faculty at Ohio State, Dr. Fareed was an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Administration at The Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Fareed received his PhD from Virginia Commonwealth University in health services organization and research and a master’s degree in business administration in healthcare management from Union Graduate College.

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• Megan Gregory, PhD Assistant Professor

  Dr. Gregory is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the College of Medicine. Her research examines individual, social and organizational factors and conditions that impact healthcare teams to improve healthcare safety and quality. Dr. Gregory also seeks to develop, implement and evaluate interventions, tools and educational programs (including simulation) to improve healthcare teamwork. As part of this work, she studies the development and validation of survey measures.

  Prior to joining The Ohio State University, Dr. Gregory was an Advanced Fellow in Health Professions Education, Evaluation and Research at the Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness & Safety with the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from the University of Central Florida, where she worked for the Institute for Simulation and Training.

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• Timothy Huerta, PhD, MS Professor

  Dr. Huerta is the Chief Research Information Officer for The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and the Ohio State College of Medicine as well as a professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Department of Biomedical Informatics. He brings to CATALYST both breadth and depth of experience in quantitative methods, health services research and multidisciplinary collaboration. Dr. Huerta is a well-published, nationally recognized expert on the use of survey data to advance discovery and has been published in a diverse set of journals. Dr. Huerta also has a long history of engaging clinical practitioners in translating the value of research to practice, and he has been recognized nationally for his work in both mentorship and teaching.

  Before joining the faculty at Ohio State, Dr. Huerta was the director of the Center for Healthcare Innovation, Education and Research at Texas Tech University where he developed the infrastructure currently in use throughout the province of British Columbia for the online delivery of continuing medical education in community oncology. Finally, Dr. Huerta has a long history outside of academia developing tools and technologies that support both research and practice.

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• Saurabh Rahurkar, DrPH, BDS Assistant Professor

  Dr. Rahurkar is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and a core faculty member with CATALYST. Before coming to Ohio State, Dr. Rahurkar was a public and population health informatics fellow in the Center for Biomedical Informatics at the Regenstrief Institute in Indianapolis. He received his Doctor of Public Health in Health Services Research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

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• Cynthia Sieck, PhD, MPH Associate Professor

  Dr. Sieck is an associate professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Dr. Sieck brings 20 years of experience in design and evaluation of interventions for individual health behavior change to CATALYST. Her current research interests include understanding patient perspectives related to health encounters, patient education within the Patient-Centered Medical Home, use of EHR/PHR, and evaluation of health behavior change interventions. In 2018, she received a $2.27 million grant from the National Institutes of Health as the principal investigator for “Total Engagement and Activation Measure (TEAM): Developing a measure of the capacity for patients to engage in their health care."
  
  Before joining the faculty, she was involved as a research specialist in a variety of health services research studies in The Ohio State University College of Public Health and served as research director for the Wright State University School of Professional Psychology. Dr. Sieck received her PhD in health behavior and health education from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a master's of public health and community health services from the University of Pittsburgh.

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• Willi (Will) Tarver, DrPH, MLIS Assistant Professor

  Dr. Tarver is an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, as well as a core faculty member with CATALYST. Dr. Tarver's research focuses on the use of health information technologies (e.g., patient portals, personal health records, and health information exchange) and understanding their potential to improve care coordination for people with cancer and who are part of underserved populations.
  
  Before coming to Ohio State, Dr. Tarver was a VA Medical Informatics Fellow in the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center's Health Services Research and Development Center for Health Information and Communication in Indianapolis. He received his Doctor of Public Health in Health Care Organization and Policy from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

• Daniel Walker, PhD, MPH Assistant Professor

  Dr. Walker is an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. His research focuses on investigating the structures and managerial competencies that improve health system capacity to implement new technologies, models of care delivery and quality improvement interventions. Drawing on training in strategic and organizational theories, his research aims to produce practice oriented conclusions that can benefit healthcare delivery.
  
  Dr. Walker’s current research explores these issues in relation to the exchange of health information across the care continuum, the implementation of patient portals in the inpatient environment, the development of accountable care organizations, changes in delivery system configuration and best practices for quality improvement. Dr. Walker received his PhD in global health management and policy from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and his Master of Public Health in health management and policy from Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health.

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CATALYST-affiliated international faculty

• Susan Moffatt-Bruce, MD, PhD, MBA CEO of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada

  Dr. Moffatt-Bruce is the CEO of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, a cardiothoracic surgeon, a research scientist, and an academic administrator. The Royal College is the national professional association that oversees the medical education and certification of specialists in Canada and the accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools. Dr. Moffatt-Bruce started her role as CEO in January 2020.
  
  Dr. Moffatt-Bruce previously served as the Executive Director of University Hospital at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. In addition to her medical degree from Dalhousie University and completion of a cardiothoracic surgery fellowship at Stanford University, she earned an MBA and a master’s in operational excellence from The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business as well as a PhD from the University of Cambridge. From 2010 to 2017, she served as the chief quality and patient safety officer at Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center.
  
  In collaboration with Drs. Ann Scheck McAlearney and Timothy Huerta, Dr. Moffatt-Bruce secured a $4 million grant to develop a patient safety learning laboratory at the medical center, the Institute for the Design of Environments Aligned for Patient Safety (IDEA4PS) from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). This “learning laboratory” is studying how feedback of information can be used to inform the development of robust practices that lead to improved patient safety.

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CATALYST affiliated faculty

• John F. P. Bridges, PhD Professor

  Dr. Bridges is a professor in the departments of Biomedical Informatics and Surgery at The Ohio State University. In addition to his role as part of CATALYST, he is a core faculty member with the Center for Surgical Health Assessment, Research and Policy (SHARP). His research furthers the translation and implementation of heathcare advances into medical practice, and he has worked to demonstrate the value of incorporating patient and caregiver viewpoints into the consideration of both the risks and benefits of treatment options. In addition to his work advancing the science of patient engagement, Dr. Bridges founded a journal, The Patient – Patient Centered Outcomes Research, as a venue dedicated to comprehending patient perspectives in medicine. Dr. Bridges earned a PhD in economics from the City University of New York Graduate Center.

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• Courtney Hebert, MD, MS Assistant Professor

  Dr. Hebert is an assistant professor appointed in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and continues to practice clinical medicine as an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Internal Medicine. In addition to these roles, she also serves as the co-chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics Graduate Studies Coordinating Committee and leads all clinical informatics and public health informatics educational efforts for the department. Her research focuses on the secondary use of electronic health record (EHR) data for research and quality improvement.
  
  She has also used EHR data to study the effect of epidemiologic context on antimicrobial prescribing, as well as to develop a novel way to represent microbiology susceptibility data to enable decision support. Dr. Hebert received her MD from The Ohio State University in 2005 and a Master of Science in public health with a specialization in biomedical informatics from The Ohio State University in 2013.

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• Jennifer Hefner, PhD, MPH Assistant Professor

  Dr. Hefner is an assistant professor in the Division of Health Management and Policy in the Ohio State College of Public Health, having received both her Master of Public Health and Ph.D. in health services organization and policy from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on applying management and organizational theories to the study of healthcare transformation in hospital settings. Currently, Dr. Hefner is working on understanding management strategies that are effective in reducing healthcare-associated infections, evaluating healthcare quality measures and studying the impact of patient portals on healthcare workflow.

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• C. Tory Hogan, PhD Assistant Professor

  Dr. Hogan is an assistant professor in the College of Public Health's Division of Health Services Management and Policy and holds a joint appointment with the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Dr. Hogan is currently exploring research on the relationship between management structures and patient quality outcomes, utilizing mixed methods. Her previous researched focused on hospital integration and performance using mixed methods. Dr. Hogan received her PhD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in health services administration.

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CATALYST clinical faculty

• Todd Barrett, MD Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine, Division of Palliative Medicine

  Dr. Barrett is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Division of Palliative Medicine at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center who specializes in cardiac palliative medicine, mechanical circulatory support, and heart failure. He attended the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Kansas City, Kansas. He completed his residency at the University of Chicago Hospitals in Chicago and a fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

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• John Oliver DeLancey, MD Assistant Professor, Department of Urology

  Dr. DeLancey is an assistant professor in the Department of Urology. His research interests include hospital and provider quality ratings, tobacco cessation, and use of patient-reported outcomes to improve quality of care.
   
  Dr. DeLancey completed his MPH in epidemiology at Emory University and worked as a cancer epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society prior to completing his MD at the University of Michigan and Urology residency at Northwestern University.

• Aslam Ejaz, MD Assistant Professor of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology

  Dr. Ejaz is an assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Surgical Oncology. A strong clinical practice, participation in the education of medical students and surgical trainees, and dedicated efforts in clinical research are the cornerstones of his academic surgery practice.

  As a practicing complex general surgical oncologist, Dr. Ejaz’s clinical practice is focused on the treatment of patients with liver, biliary, pancreas, and other gastrointestinal malignancies through innovative, minimally invasive robotic surgery techniques. As a health services researcher, his research efforts are focused on assessing and improving the delivery of high-value cancer care. He is involved in the development of several clinical trials focused on a multidisciplinary and personalized approach to cancer care.

  Dr. Ejaz earned his Master of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2014 and received his medical degree from the Howard University College of Medicine in 2010. His career goal is to become an independent, funded investigator by developing, evaluating, and implementing evidenced-based innovative approaches for patients who require major cancer surgery.

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• Peter Kneuertz, MD Assistant Professor, Division of Thoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery

  Dr. Kneuertz is a thoracic surgeon with The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. He received his medical degree from the University of Cologne Medical Faculty in Cologne, Germany. His residencies took place at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore and the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, and he completed his fellowship with the Weill Cornell & Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

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• Samilia Obeng-Gyasi, MD Assistant Professor, Division of Surgical Oncology

  Dr. Obeng-Gyasi is a physician specializing in surgical oncology with The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. She attended the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She completed her residency at the Cleveland Clinic and a fellowship at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Clinical fellows

• Eliza Beal, MD, MS Clinical Fellow

  Dr. Beal is a clinical fellow at The Ohio State University. She received a bachelor's degree in biological anthropology from the University of Michigan and earned her medical doctorate at the The Ohio State University College of Medicine. 

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• Jennifer Lee, MD Clinical Informatics Fellow

  Dr. Lee is a fellow in clinical informatics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and a practicing pediatric gastroenterologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. She wants to leverage technology to improve bedside clinical care and understand how the implementation of technology affects physician and patient experience through the healthcare system. Dr. Lee's recent studies focus on understanding physician practices regarding use of the electronic health record (EHR), studying the effects of operational changes to the EHR as well as point of care clinical decision support. She received her medical degree from the West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown and completed her residency in pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science center at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital/St. Judes Children's Hospital in Memphis.

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CATALYST research staff

• Matthew DePuccio, PhD, MS

  Dr. DePuccio is a post-doctoral researcher with CATALYST. He collaborates with faculty in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the College of Medicine. He supports the planning, data collection, and dissemination of CATALYST research that focus on improving health care quality and reducing health care disparities. Dr. DePuccio has expertise using quantitative and qualitative research methods to examine the implementation of innovative primary care delivery models. He received his PhD in health services organization and research from Virginia Commonwealth University and holds a Master of Science degree in health policy and management from the University at Albany.

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• Gennaro Di Tosto, PhD

  Dr. Di Tosto is a post-doctoral researcher collaborating on CATALYST’s healthcare analytics initiatives across several projects. His current work explores innovative methods for leveraging analytics and data science to improve healthcare delivery. His interdisciplinary background includes projects using computational and simulation methods for the study of collective behavior. Dr. Di Tosto holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Padova, Italy, and has conducted research in learning analytics at The Ohio State University. 

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• Pallavi Jonnalagadda, MBBS, DrPH

  Dr. Jonnalagadda is a post-doctoral researcher working with Drs. Naleef Fareed and Saurabh Rahurkar. Her current projects using big data approaches to examine the role of health information technology in improving outcomes pertaining to public health, healthcare delivery, and healthcare practices. Her research interests include data science, social determinants of health, and evaluation of policies and interventions. She received a doctorate in public health and master's degree in public health in epidemiology from the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh.

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• Sarah MacEwan, PhD

  Dr. MacEwan is a post-doctoral researcher in CATALYST. Her research interests focus on the use of health information technologies to enhance patient engagement and improve patient care. Her current projects examine health literacy and patient education, patient-reported outcomes, and health disparities related to the access and use of health information technology tools. Dr. MacEwan received her PhD from Duke University in biomedical engineering. Before joining CATALYST, she conducted postdoctoral research in molecular engineering at the University of Chicago.

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• Kyi Phyu Nyein, PhD

  Kyi Phyu Nyein, PhD, is a post-doctoral researcher under the mentorship of Dr. Megan Gregory at CATALYST. She received her PhD in industrial/organizational psychology from the Florida Institute of Technology in 2019. She is a scientist and researcher at heart, and she believes in bringing science to the real world to benefit and help individuals, teams, and organizations. Her current research interests include interpersonal trust dynamics, particularly trust violation and repair, as well as team dynamics and their intersections with technology in promoting health services and implementation science research efforts.

• Alison Aldrich, MSI, MPH

  Alison Aldrich, MSI, MPH. Alison is a senior research data analytics specialist for CATALYST. She received a Master of Science in Information degree from the University of Michigan and a Master of Public Health from Wright State University. Alison worked for several years as an academic health sciences librarian. She provides research and publication support for CATALYST, as well as leadership for the PCORI taxonomy project.

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• Sadie Chen, MLIS

  Sadie is a resource planning analyst. She received a Master of Library and Information Science from Kent State University and completed her graduate school practicum at Mount Carmel West Health Sciences Library in Columbus, Ohio. Sadie worked for several years as a librarian, taxonomist, and digital archivist. She is the project manager for the Ohio State instance of Eagle-i, which is an online research resource repository. She also does qualitative coding for the HEALing Communities Study grant.

• Lindsey Sova, MPH

  Lindsey received her Master of Public Health from The Ohio State University. She is a project manager for CATALYST and is responsible for overseeing daily operations of studies as well as supervising research staff and students. Lindsey brings prior expertise as a research assistant in both academic and practice settings. She provides project management for the team’s MEDTAPP projects and MyChart/patient portals research activities. She previously acted as the implementation lead for HT2 and provided project management for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Taxonomy Project.

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• Christine Swoboda, PhD, MS

  Dr. Swoboda is a senior research data analytics specialist in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Her research interests include behavior change interventions for chronic disease prevention and treatment, and the effects of health behaviors on risk reduction. Her current research involves improving data collection and reporting for community-level infant mortality prevention programs across Ohio. Dr. Swoboda received her PhD from The Ohio State University in human nutrition and her Master of Science from SUNY University at Buffalo.

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• Lauren Phelps, MPA

  Lauren received her Master of Public Administration with a concentration in Health Services Management and Policy from The Ohio State University. Lauren has 25 years of experience developing, implementing, or evaluating health care policies and programs in both the private and public sectors. She is the Project Manager for the Total Engagement and Activation Measure (TEAM) project at CATALYST and is responsible for overseeing daily study operations as well as assisting with health services research activities.

  Lauren also serves as a research specialist within the Department of Research Information Technology. In this role, she assists with program development and management of initiatives. Prior to these roles, she most recently served as a research evaluator with the Center for Health Outcomes, Policy, and Evaluation Studies within the Ohio State College of Public Health. 

• Harish Gureddygari, MS

  Harish graduated with a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Cincinnati. He has experience in predictive analytics and is currently involved in developing solutions that help in data capture, data research, and visualizing data through the creation of dashboards.
  

• Seth Scarborough, MAS

  Seth received his master’s degree in applied statistics from The Ohio State University. He is a research data analyst for CATALYST and is responsible for cleaning and analyzing data across a number of projects. Currently, Seth is working with survey data from the HT2 and TEAM projects.

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• Natasha Kurien, MPH

  Natasha received her Bachelor of Arts in chemistry and biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University and her Master of Public Health from Dartmouth College. She works with the qualitative team on research and analysis. She is a part of various projects including Total Engagement and Activation Measure (TEAM), the HEALing Communities Study, Opioid Innovation Fund, HT2, and projects related to pancreas cancer patient quality of care.

• Jaclyn Volney, MPH

  Jaclyn received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Public Health at The Ohio State University. She conducts qualitative coding on CATALYST’s projects including the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) project. She also assists with managing transcription projects across CATALYST studies.
  

   

   

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• John Lawrence, MS

  John earned his master’s in biomedical engineering from the University of Cincinnati. He joins us after three years at Epic Systems, where he worked in ambulatory and was a senior developer of the Provider Efficiency Profile. He currently is working on the SMART, HINTS and My Experience projects.

• Holly Heffer

  Holly received her Bachelor of Science in psychology and sociology from The Ohio State University. She assists with various CATALYST projects, and will begin her Master in Health Administration program starting this fall at Ohio State. 

• Abigail Petrecca

  Abigail is a clinical research assistant for CATALYST. She received her Bachelor of Science in biology from Washington and Lee University. She assists with provisioning tablets for the HT2 study.

Administrative and professional staff

• Tyler Griesenbrock Scientific Editor

  Tyler is a communication specialist with more than a decade of experience as an editor, designer, and web producer. As the scientific editor for CATALYST, he is responsible for projects such as developing Tableau dashboards and their accompanying documentation; creating paper and web-based forms for data submission; editing and designing graphics for grant applications and publications; and creating articles, flyers, and videos to explain the work done at the center. He served as the assistant editor for Volume 19 of Advances in Health Care Management and is responsible for updating and maintaining the CATALYST website as well as other associated websites. In addition, he serves on the communication, dashboard, and portal teams for the HEALing Communities Study. Tyler received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Dayton, and he spent 10 years in the newspaper industry.

• Robert Strouse Director of Digital User Experience

  Robert is the Director of Digital User Experience (UX) at CATALYST. His primary responsibility is to collaborate with cross-functional, multidisciplinary teams and build meaningful experiences between the healthcare systems CATALYST seeks to create and the humans who will interact with them. Nearly two decades of experience in the design of products, interfaces, systems, and policies have enabled Robert to identify and create targeted solutions to complex user-centered design problems. His mandate is to create experiences that people find useful, usable, and desirable. 
   
  Before joining CATALYST, Robert was a UX Specialist and Designer at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH), where he is a patented inventor and proven innovator. While at NCH, Robert created a variety of interfaces that supported research staff in the collection and analysis of research data, a custom VR system that reduced a child’s anxiety in clinic, several mobile apps, and over a dozen medical devices. He helped shape policy within the hospital. Robert also has had the opportunity to research, co-design, and test interfaces for military command and control; a novel Burn ICU EHR; and an app that allowed an untrained marine to coordinate and negotiate a resupply mission with an autonomous helicopter. Robert is also a regular contributor on several peer-reviewed publications.

• Pam Thompson Administrative Assistant

  Pam is the Administrative Assistant for CATALYST. She has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from The Ohio State University and provides administrative support to the core faculty within the center. Pam is responsible for processing all travel and purchasing requests as well as coordinating calendars for meetings. She also assists in various other administrative tasks to support the team's research goals.