Leadership

Co-Directors/Mentors

Allison Kempe, MD, MPH, is the Program Director of the HRSA-funded ACCORDS Primary Care Research Fellowship. She is a tenured Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School Anschutz Medical Campus with a secondary appointment in the Colorado School of Public Health. As the founding Director of ACCORDS (Adult and Child Consortium for Outcomes Research and Delivery Science), a collaborative program at the Anschutz Medical Center, she oversees the training and the expansion of community-translational, dissemination and implementation (D&I) and outcomes research for a large community of researchers from multiple Schools. She was the principal investigator for an AHRQ-funded Center for Excellence in Implementation Science and Prevention (CRISP), which was the genesis of the ACCORDS D&I Program, now headed by an internationally renowned D&I scientist. She has been a health services researcher for approximately 35 years with a primary focus on improving the provision of preventive care in primary care settings, in racial and economic health disparities, and in telemedicine to improve healthcare delivery. Dr. Kempe has substantial methodological expertise in the conduct of pragmatic trials in clinical and community settings, comparative effectiveness, program evaluation, and the conduct of surveys. She has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications and has been the PI on 22 federal R01, Center, or training grants. She was the Fellowship director for both the HRSA-funded Primary Care Faculty Development Fellowship and the Institutional NRSA PCRF between 2002 and 2012 and developed and directed the SCORE Fellowship for surgical and subspecialty faculty focused on HSR 2013-2016. Dr. Kempe is currently a co-Director of a K12 from NHLBI that focuses on implementation and dissemination science. During her career, she has been a mentor for 83 post-doctoral trainees and the primary mentor for 38. She has been a mentor for 10 funded career development awards with all completers transitioning to R funding.

Elizabeth Bayliss, MD, MSPH, is a Family Physician, Senior Investigator in the Kaiser Permanente Colorado (KPCO) Institute for Health Research, and Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado. Her research career focuses on the systematic delivery of patient-centered care to complex and vulnerable patient populations with an emphasis on applied methods and studies of disease–disease and disease–treatment interactions. She has practiced Family Medicine as faculty in a community residency program in Denver, CO; in the underserved community of Commerce City, CO; and in the Kaiser Permanente Colorado integrated delivery system. In 2013, Dr. Bayliss joined the core mentorship faculty for the internally-supported University of Colorado Primary Care Research Fellowship and directed the Fellowship program from 2016-2020. From 2011-2015, she was a standing member of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Health Care Research Training (HCRT) study section and has served on several National Institute on Aging GEMSSTAR review panels—all tasked with supporting promising early-career investigators. Dr. Bayliss has over 15 years of federally-supported research experience. Her current projects include developing and leading a multisite pragmatic trial of deprescribing; co-leading the Data and Methods core for the US Deprescribing Research Network; collaborating to develop a dashboard to outreach patients with complex medical and social needs, and collaborating on two infrastructure development projects to foster new talent and knowledge in dementia care and in geriatric research. Her additional methods expertise includes instrument development for self-reported morbidity and treatment burden, survey design and administration, qualitative methods, observational study designs, competing outcomes, and applications of longitudinal patient-reported data. Her content expertise includes medication management, care continuity, quality of care, and morbidity measurement—all focusing on the multimorbid population. Dr. Bayliss has been the primary mentor for 7 post-doctoral fellows (and multiple pre-doctoral candidates and joint informal mentees including early-career investigators on multi-site projects). Six mentees have faculty appointments and have external research funding including two with federal career development awards.

Russell Glasgow, PhD, is the director of the Dissemination and Implementation (D&I) Program of ACCORDS. He was formerly Deputy Director for Implementation Science at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Glasgow has extensive experience developing and using the RE-AIM framework and related approaches that focus on enhancing the reach, adoption, adaptation, and sustainability of evidence-based programs. His research and mentoring focuses on using pragmatic models and methods for numerous primary care issues including chronic illness prevention and self-management, management of behavioral health disorders, value-based care delivery, and quality improvement initiatives. He has over 450 peer-reviewed publications, is listed among the top 1% of the most frequently cited authors in the social sciences, and has been awarded 25 NIH grants. Dr. Glasgow has mentored both MD and PhD trainees, including some of the current leaders in D&I science. He has been a primary developer of multiple training programs in D&I including the NIH-sponsored Training in Implementation Research in Health, the NIH-funded implementation science training program in behavioral and social science research to eliminate chronic disease disparities and he currently directs the K12 Career Development Training program in D&I. 

Romana Hasnain-Wynia, PhD, is the Chief Research Officer at Denver Health (DH). She has extensive experience conducting research and mentoring junior faculty, fellows, and students. Previously, Dr. Hasnain-Wynia served as the director of the Addressing Disparities Program at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and led the development of funding announcements to advance equity in primary care (e.g., Improving Obesity Outcomes in Primary Care Settings, Reducing Disparities for Uncontrolled Asthma, Reducing Hypertension Disparities In Primary Care). Additionally, she was the Director of the Center for Health Care Equity at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine where she served as the Associate Director of the AHRQ T32-Institutional NRSA Service Award and as the Education and Training Lead for the AHRQ funded P01 Center of Excellence in Advancing Equity in Clinical Preventive Services and Primary Care. Dr. Hasnain-Wynia previously mentored over 20 junior investigators who went on to receive career development and extramural funding and she currently mentors 19 junior investigators at DH who have received Pilot Funding through the DH Health Pilot Funding Grant Program. Her research expertise corresponds to the following HHS/HRSA priority areas: equity, health disparities, designing culturally tailored interventions, social determinants of health, equity measurement in health care organizations, and transforming the workforce-targeting the need.

Amy Huebschmann, MD, MS, FACP, is an Associate Professor and Clinician-Investigator in the Division of General Medicine. She is the founding Director of the Graduate Certificate in D&I science for the University of Colorado Graduate Program in Clinical Sciences, immediate-past chair of the Education, Training, and Career Development Council for the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and a past Co-Director of the Primary Care Research Fellowship in Health Services Research. Dr. Huebschmann has mentored 10 junior faculty and 7 research fellows locally and nationally in these roles. She has a diverse set of primary care health services research experiences and methods expertise in D&I science and behavioral science. She is the Co-Director of the research capacity-building unit for the NIH-funded Implementation Science Cancer Center with a major focus on tobacco cessation and lung cancer screening in rural primary care, lead D&I co-investigator for the NHLBI-funded UG3/UH3 dissemination trial to improve disparities in pediatric asthma care, Co-Director and mentor on the NHLBI D&I K12 training grant, and has 10 years of experience as a PI of pragmatic trials. The overarching goal of Dr. Huebschmann’s independent line of research inquiry is to optimize the delivery of evidence-based interventions to improve care for diabetes and other chronic diseases in randomized-controlled trials, and to adapt those interventions to be feasible for delivery in real-world primary care or community-based settings. 

Additional APCRF Faculty & Staff

Souha Fares PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Informatics, Colorado School of Public Health, and an ACCORDS biostatistician. She consults with faculty across the CU-AMC campus regarding biostatistics issues and has been the designated biostatistical support for the Primary Care and Health Services Research Fellowship program at ACCORDS. Her main research focuses on the complexity and fluctuation of beat-to-beat blood pressure time series, psychometric analysis of research instruments, and structural equation modeling.  Her previous collaborations span a wide range of health topics including COVID-19, cardiovascular disease, mental health, quality of life and the nursing workforce. Dr. Fares consults with all trainees regarding data analysis and biostatistics for fellowship research projects.

Mark Gritz, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Head of the Division of Health Care Policy and Research and the Director of Operations at the Farley Health Policy Center and at ACCORDS. He received his PhD in economics from Stanford University and has over 30 years of experience directing and managing demonstrations, evaluations, research, and technical assistance projects designed to improve economic and health outcomes of economically-disadvantaged and vulnerable populations. His current work focuses on healthcare value and its association with socio-economics factors with the goal of rapidly responding to research and policy analysis needs of government agencies, corresponding to HHS/HRSA priority area transforming the health care system through value-based care and quality improvement. Dr. Gritz has over 25 years of experience in conducting economic analysis examining the impact of a wide variety of intervention programs on economic and other outcomes affecting the health and well-being of low socio-economic populations, including several cost of implementation, return on investment, and benefit-cost analyses. He is leading a seminar series on the sustainability of healthcare innovations that will educate clinical investigators in using economic analysis methods to assess sustainability from multiple perspectives, including patients, providers, payers, policymakers, and society. He recently completed the economic analyses on an evaluation of three patient navigator or community health worker interventions that included the application of micro-costing methods to measure implementation costs, a return on investment analysis, and an incremental cost effectiveness analysis. Dr. Gritz also recently completed the economic analysis of a National Diabetes Prevention Program delivered by a Federally Qualified Health Center and Safety Net Hospital. In addition, he recently mentored a post-doctoral fellow in conducting time-driven activity-based costing analysis and calculating return on investment for a telehealth intervention and for a palliative care intervention for patients with advanced Parkinson’s Disease. 

Megan Morris, PhD, MPH, CCC-SLP, is an Associate Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and a methodologist in the Qualitative and Mixed Methods Core at ACCORDS.  She previously served as the director for 5 years, growing the Core by 500% during her tenure. Dr. Morris has served as the qualitative and mixed methods mentor on over 10 federally funded career development awards. In her own research, Dr. Morris is a nationally renowned researcher in the area of disability health care disparities. Most of her work has focused on the primary care setting and ensuring that patients with disability have equitable access to primary care services. She currently leads a national multi-site clinical trial on improving the quality of communication between patients with communication disabilities and their primary care teams. Her interests correspond with the HHS/HRSA priority areas: value-based care delivery and quality improvement initiatives, telehealth, population health, early detection, treatment, and management of acute, episodic, chronic, and multiple chronic diseases. Dr. Morris consults with all trainees about qualitative and mixed methods research for fellowship research projects.

Rebecca Speer, MA, is the Research Training Program Manager at ACCORDS for the K12 IMPACT Program in D&I Science and the SCORE Fellowship, and serves as the coordinator for the ACCORDS Primary Care Research Fellowship. She has worked for over the last decade managing research projects and programs in academic medicine, and has been responsible for all day-to-day operations for each of ACCORDS’ fellowship programs since joining the department in December of 2017.  Ms. Speer is a graduate of the University of Colorado, Boulder where she received two bachelor’s degrees in Spanish Language and Literature and in Communication. She then attended the University of California, Santa Barbara where she completed a master’s degree in Communication in 2010. Prior to her work at ACCORDS, she was the Research Project Coordinator on a pragmatic obesity trial in primary care at Denver Health Medical Center and facilitated bilingual courses in English and Spanish on nutrition and exercise for families in a number of primary care clinics there.

Additional Primary Care Mentors and Expertise by Site (not inclusive)

GP=General Pediatrics; GIM=General Internal Medicine; FM=Family Medicine; DH=Denver Health; SPH=University of Colorado School of Public Health; CUSP=University of Colorado School of Pharmacy
Chronic dx d/t/m=Early detection, treatment, and management of chronic disease