ONEFLORIDA+ - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Director, Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research Director, Ph.D. Program in Health Services Research & Policy Director, Certificate Program in Quality, Patient Safety & Outcomes Research
- Member of the Committee
Albert Wu, MD, MPH., is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at John Hopkins University, with joint appointments in Medicine, Epidemiology, International Health, Surgery, and Business.. He was among the first to measure quality of life outcomes in people with HIV and helped develop the Outcomes Committee of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group of the NIH ACTG. Since 1988, he has studied the handling of medical errors. Wu was president of the International Society for Quality of Life Research, a member of the Institute of Medicine committee on Preventing Medication Errors, and Senior Adviser to the World Health Organization Patient Safety program in Geneva from 2007-2009. He has published 395 peer reviewed papers and maintains a clinical practice in general internal medicine.
Job Titles:
- Citizen Scientist, UF
- Member of the Committee
Job Titles:
- Executive
- Interim Executive Dean for Research and Research Education, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami / Member, OneFlorida Executive and Steering Committees
- Member of the Committee
Dr. Dushyantha T. Jayaweera was appointed as the Executive Dean for Research, Research Education, and Innovation Medicine for the Miller School of Medicine. He was the Associate Vice Provost for Human Subject Protection prior to this appointment. Dr. Jayaweera has over 20 years of experience in HIV and serves as the Director for the HIV/HCV co-infection clinic. He has received grant support from the National Institutes of Drug Abuse, National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Jayaweera has led and continues to lead numerous industry-funded trials HIV and HIV/HCV coinfection. Additionally, he serves the larger South Florida community as an AIDS educator, and is a senior faculty member of the AIDS.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Committee
- Scientific Director of Nursing
- Scientific Director, Nursing, Whole Person Health and Academic Research
Dr. Patricia Robinson is the scientific director of Nursing, Whole Person Health, and Academic Research at AdventHealth. She has been a research leader at AdventHealth since 2009, when she left her tenure-track academic appointment in the College of Nursing at the University of Central Florida to pursue biobehavioral research full-time.
In 1994, she received a bachelor of science degree in nursing from the University of Central Florida. She completed her graduate work at the University of Florida, receiving a master of science degree in nursing in 2000 and a Ph.D. in nursing in 2006.
She has received numerous awards and accolades for her research, leadership and service. As a highly regarded nurse scientist, she understands the intricacies of the challenges faced by caregivers, the rigorous demands of scientific inquiry, and how to merge the two perspectives. She provides effective leadership by leveraging her 16 years of direct clinical care experience with a sophisticated understanding of methodology. Dr. Robinson's teams develop and implement innovative, data-driven solutions to improve care quality and processes. She has a well-established history of external collaborations designed to advance the field of health care. Her expertise is complemented with her passion for addressing the needs of medically underrepresented. She seeks to identify barriers to care of the stigmatized and medically underserved while working tirelessly to promote public policy changes that impact community health.
Job Titles:
- Director, University of Florida Clinical and Translational Science Institute / Assistant Vice President for Research, University of Florida / Associate Dean, University of Florida College of Medicine
- Member of the Committee
Duane A. Mitchell, M.D., Ph.D. is the Phyllis Kottler Friedman Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery. He serves as director of the UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) and co-director of the Preston A. Wells, Jr. Center for Brain Tumor Therapy. He graduated from the Medical Scientist Training Program (M.D./Ph.D.) at Duke University Medical Center and completed post-graduate training in pathology and neuro-oncology research prior to joining the faculty at Duke in 2005 as an assistant professor. During his tenure at Duke, Dr. Mitchell served as the director of pre-clinical research at the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center and as the associate director of the Duke Brain Tumor Immunotherapy Program.
In 2013, Dr. Mitchell was recruited to the University of Florida and leads a comprehensive neuro-oncology program focused on translational brain tumor research within the Preston A. Wells, Jr. Center for Brain Tumor Therapy. In collaboration with the center's founder and co-director, Dr. William A. Friedman, the Wells Brain Tumor Center has grown to one of the largest brain tumor centers in the United States, with over 100 full-time employees dedicated to brain tumor research and clinical care and drawing patients from over 35 states and internationally for novel brain tumor treatments.
Dr. Mitchell is a leading expert in the development of innovative immunotherapy treatments for adults and children with malignant brain tumors. He has pioneered many novel brain tumor immunotherapies that have been translated into first-in-human clinical trials and multi-center phase 2 studies. Dr. Mitchell has received numerous awards and recognition for his work, including a 2016 Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Award from the Clinical Research Forum in Washington, D.C., induction into the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2019, and induction into the Academy of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics of Florida in 2020. Dr. Mitchell has received over $40 million in research awards as principal investigator and has been continuously funded by the NIH for his cancer research since 2009. His research has been supported by the NIH, Department of Defense, and numerous private foundations, and he is inventor on over 25 patents for novel cancer therapeutics. Dr. Mitchell has served on several national and international advisory boards for industry, academia, and government agencies, including the NCI Board of Scientific Counselors, Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) Scientific Review Board, and as gubernatorial appointee and chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Florida Center for Brain Tumor Research (FCBTR).
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Department of Health Outcomes
- Member of the Committee
Elizabeth A. Shenkman, Ph.D., is the chairperson for the Department of Health Outcomes & Biomedical Informatics, the director of the Institute for Child Health Policy at the University of Florida and the co-director of the NIH-funded University of Florida Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). Dr. Shenkman's research focuses on: 1) determining which combinations of health care delivery, community, and patient factors influence quality and outcomes of care; and 2) developing corresponding evidence-based strategies to improve health outcomes. She is the lead co-principal investigator (PI) for the PCORI-funded OneFlorida+ Clinical Data Research Network, an alliance of academic centers and health system partners in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. In her role as the co-director of the UF CTSI, Dr. Shenkman leads the Implementation Science Program, which develops strategies to promote the uptake of evidence-based best practices in health care settings. Additionally, Dr. Shenkman is the PI of a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services-funded randomized clinical trial designed to examine effects of the combined use of health navigators and a flexible wellness account on cardiovascular disease risk reduction among individuals with co-occurring physical and mental health conditions. This project leverages large linked electronic health record, health claims and laboratory data to examine patient outcomes.
Gary L. Freed, M.D., MPH, has over 18 years of experience in children's health services research and has been the principal investigator of numerous federal, state and foundation-funded grants. He has published over 140 peer-reviewed articles on child health policy and health economics, physician behavior and interspecialty variation in the provision of preventive services to children. Dr. Freed is the immediate past President of the Society for Pediatric Research, the largest research society in the field of child health. Dr. Freed also serves on several national committees. He is the immediate past Chair of the Department of Health and Human Services National Vaccine Advisory Committee. He is a frequent consultant to state and federal agencies as well as the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the World Health Organization. He is a member of the American Board of Pediatrics and a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Graham Warren, Ph.D., M.D., is associate professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Pharmacology at the Medical University of South Carolina, a member of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Hollings Cancer Center, and is vice chairman for research in radiation oncology, which is his primary appointment. Warren's research interests focus on three primary areas: 1) Understanding the effects of tobacco and tobacco-related products on outcomes in cancer patients, 2) Testing the effects of effect modifiers for chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy in cancer cells and normal tissues, 3) Improving methods to optimize data collection that can be used for automated decision making. Warren's work is leading to changes in treatment guidelines as well as the design and execution of clinical trials through coordinated efforts by the American Cancer Society (ACS), American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), and the National Cancer Institute. Warren earned his Ph.D. and M.D. from the University of Kentucky.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Committee
- Professor of Medicine at the University of Alabama
James Willig, M.D., is a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), where he has served as the informatics director for the UAB HIV/AIDS Clinic (2005-2012), director of medical informatics for UAB Health System Information Services (2012-2015), faculty of the Informatics Institute and the co-founder and informatics lead of the Research and Informatics Service Center (RISC) at UAB (2011 to present). He is board-certified in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and clinical informatics, and serves as the assistant dean of clinical education at UAB Medical School. Dr. Willig has contributed to or led the design of several software applications that facilitate data capture for research at UAB, including the HIV/AIDS Computerized Patient Record v.2 (used for chronic disease care for a clinic with over 2,000 active patients from 2006-2012); the PRO Software Platform (real-time PRO capture currently in over 10 clinical sites); ArthritisPower (platform for research and PRO at-home data capture, available in app stores with over 20,000 users); and Kaizen Education (gamification in education, over 12,000 users). Another area of focus has been working closely with investigators to plan extraction and transformation of data from the Enterprise Data Warehouse into research-ready datasets.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Committee
- Senior Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs, Florida State University / Member, OneFlorida Executive and Steering Committees
Dr. Joyce has been engaged in biomedical research, graduate education and research administration for more than 30 years. He has been a leader in interdisciplinary research programs at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (Philadelphia, PA) and Sun Health Research Institute (Sun City, AZ), where he served as Associate Director of Sun Health Research Institute., and senior scientist for the Thomas H. Christopher Parkinson's Disease Research Center. He also directed a Center without walls for Parkinson's disease research. In 2007 he established the Division of Research at Maricopa Integrated Health System in Phoenix, AZ where he served as Director until 2012. He also was appointed Research Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Arizona College of Medicine − Phoenix and Associate Professor in School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering at Arizona State University (Tempe). In 2012 Dr. Joyce began serving as Vice President for Research at Kansas City University, and Professor of Pharmacology. He assumed the role of Senior Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs in 2017. An internationally known researcher and pharmaceutical consultant in central nervous system drug discovery, Joyce's work has led to target development for drug discovery in both schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease. He has published over 150 original papers and book chapters in a diverse arena of neuroscience topics. He has been awarded more than 25 federal, state and pharmaceutical industry grants and has served on multiple review boards for National Institutes of Health, Veteran's Administration, and Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
Job Titles:
- CEO and President / CommunityHealth IT, Inc.
- Community Health IT
- Member of the Committee
Kendra Siler, Ph.D., is a nationally recognized leader in technologies and policies to support communities' needs, digital security, information sharing, and interoperability. Dr. Siler has 20 years of experience in technology architecture design and community capacity building for complex healthcare, transportation, and communication issues. She is an appointed stakeholder advisor to the White House Office of American Innovation and works in an advisory role to several federal agencies.
At CommunityHealth IT, Dr. Siler led the development of one of the first operational community-based Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) for rural and underserved patients; this HIE was appointed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to allow veteran-initiated electronic sharing of their MyHealtheVet health records with civilian providers to improve veterans' healthcare access. Dr. Siler was the primary writer of 2019 federal award-winning Technical Section Volume 1 of the "Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices" that is being widely distributed nationwide by HHS to help healthcare organizations of all sizes improve their cybersecurity practices. She is an appointed expert for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Transportation Research Board Panel for Emergency Management in State Transportation Agencies. For Dr. Siler's depth and breadth of work in helping the nation's rural health systems adopt health technologies, she received a 2013 Critical Access and Rural Hospital Champion Award from the head of the U.S. Office of the National Coordinator.
Dr. Siler received a Ph.D. from the University of Florida Department of Microbiology and Cell Science where she specialized in Immunology and Biochemistry. She received a National Research Service Award (NRSA) Fellowship to do post-doctoral research at the McKnight Brain Institute. During her time at the McKnight Brain Institute, she also started working on combining technologies to improve community health and the best ways to protect the privacy and security of centralized data.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director, Office of Research
- Member of the Committee
Kristin Herman currently serves as director of the Office of Research at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare.
Job Titles:
- Cancer Research, Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, Department of Internal Medicine, Ohio State University
Electra D. Paskett, Ph.D., is the Marion N. Rowley Professor of Cancer Research at The Ohio State University. She is the Division Director of Cancer Prevention and Control in the College of Medicine, professor in the Division of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health and Associate Director for Population Sciences and Program Leader of the Cancer Control Program in the Comprehensive Cancer Center of the Ohio State University. She is also Director of the Center for Cancer Health Equity at the James Cancer Hospital. Dr. Paskett's research is directed at cancer prevention, early detection and survivorship issues specifically among underserved populations. Dr. Paskett successfully competed for an NCI-funded P50 to examine why rates of cervical cancer are high in Appalachia Ohio. She also has received funding from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation since 2001. She continues to work with the Women's Health Initiative. Dr. Paskett also has numerous awards such as the American Society of Preventive Oncology Distinguished Achievement Award, The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology Jimmie Holland Award, the American Association for Cancer Research Distinguished Lecture Award and the AACR Team Science Award. In 2016, she became a member of the National Cancer Institute's National Cancer Advisory Board.
Matthew L. Anderson earned both his M.D. and Ph.D. at Yale University and trained clinically in obstetrics and gynecology at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He has completed additional subspecialty surgical training in gynecologic oncology at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Following his fellowship, Dr. Anderson joined the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), where he served as director for the Division of Gynecologic Oncology, and one of the academic leads for the NCI-funded Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Anderson's work at BCM led to national recognition for his efforts to improve rates of cervical cancer screening among medically underserved women in Texas.
In 2018, Dr. Anderson joined the University of South Florida. He currently serves as medical director for the Office of Clinical Research, where he has played a key role in establishing multiple new institutional resources, including a comprehensive population sciences data repository and a rapidly growing tissue biorepository. He maintains an active laboratory-based research program and participates actively in the NIH's Clinical Proteomics Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC). His work has been supported by the National Cancer Institute, Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), National Science Foundation, and the Gynecologic Cancer Foundation, among others.
Job Titles:
- Director, FLDOH Community Health
- Member of the Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Committee
- Professor
- Professor, Department of Medicine - Infectious Diseases / Director, Center for Outcomes Effectiveness Research and Education
Dr. Mugavero is a professor in the Department of Medicine-Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Mugavero's HIV research program includes observational/cohort studies, behavioral interventions, and implementation science studies anchored to a status neutral care continuum, with particular emphasis on care engagement. Dr. Mugavero serves as director for the Center for Outcomes Effectiveness Research and Education (COERE), co-director of the Center for AIDS Research, and principal investigator of an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality training grant in health services and outcomes research. As director of the COERE, he works with an interdisciplinary team of faculty and staff on a diverse portfolio of training, learning health system, and enrichment programs.
Job Titles:
- Citizen Scientist, UF
- Member of the Committee