SCORE Updates
SCORE Update October 2024
The SCORE (Surgical/Subspecialist Clinical Outcomes Research) Fellowship (Program Director: Jacinda Nicklas, MD, MPH) is a two-year intensive training program for junior faculty consisting of a curriculum of lectures, mentoring of research, and an intensive grant writing course for second year fellows with the goal of a completed grant (e.g., K award) for submission. Additional components of the program include full biostatistical and analytical support for projects, a career development curriculum, and access to additional ACCORDS resources.
The fellowship is off to a great start again this year. In July, we welcomed our 11th cohort: six new fellows started the program, joining our six second year fellows who will graduate next June. The Fellowship Co-Directors are pleased to announce our new cohort of impressive scholars: Drs. Megan Abbott, Honora Burnett, Michelle Knees, Melanie Stall, Christine Welles and Jordan Wyrwa. Please see below for a brief introduction to each trainee, their research interests, and what they plan to accomplish in their two years in the SCORE Fellowship:
Megan Abbott, MD is an Assistant Professor in Pediatrics-Neurology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and practices pediatric neurology at Children’s Hospital Colorado. She graduated with an MD (Ethics track) from Baylor College of Medicine and completed both Pediatric and Child Neurology residencies at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital Colorado. Prior to joining the SCORE Fellowship, she was an Epilepsy fellow at CU. In July Dr. Abbott was awarded as PI a one-year Dravet Syndrome Foundation Clinician Researcher Grant for increasing clinical trial readiness in DSCreation and pilot of Dravet specific clinical outcome measures. Her overarching vision is to create a wholistic set of caregiver and clinician-reported outcome measures for Developmental Epileptic Encephalopathies (DEEs). Her goal for the SCORE Fellowship is to develop as a clinician scientist, engaging in learning and mentorship surrounding qualitative methods, outcome measure development, and statistical knowledge.
Honora Quinn Burnett, MD, MSPPM is a pediatrician and the medical director of the school-based health center virtual care program at Denver Health. She attended college at Barnard College, Columbia University, obtained a Master’s of Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, attended medical school at Brown University and completed internship and residency at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). After a few years as a faculty member at UCSF, Dr. Burnett returned to her hometown (Boulder, CO) with her husband and three children. Her current research interests include social welfare policies for vulnerable children and parents, non-traditional mechanisms of medical connection in school-based health, integration of medical and psychiatric care, and leveraging policy to reduce health disparities.
Michelle Knees, DO is an assistant professor and academic hospitalist in the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She completed her internal medicine residency at the University of Colorado in 2021, followed by a year as Chief Resident of Quality and Patient Safety at the Rocky Mountain Regional VA. She also serves as faculty with the Institute of Healthcare Quality, Safety, and Efficiency, where she coaches multidisciplinary teams in implementing quality and process improvement projects. Her research focuses on clinician attention and cognitive load, with a current emphasis on secure messaging practices and their impact on clinical work. During the SCORE Fellowship, she plans to continue exploring the role of cognitive load in hospitalist workforce design, staffing models, and patient safety.
Melanie Stall, MD is a pediatric oncologist with an interest in health disparities, communication, and supportive care research. She completed her medical education at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine, Pediatrics residency at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and Pediatric Hematology Oncology fellowship at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Her prior work has focused on exploring the needs and perceptions of parents who speak languages other than English in the context of navigating pediatric cancer therapy. Dr. Stall’s current research centers on the development of parent-endorsed multilingual interventions aimed at improving patient centered outcomes. She aims to gain experience during the SCORE Fellowship in dissemination and implementation research and further develop the skills needed to lead an independent research program.
Christy Welles, MD, MAS is a hospitalist interested in improving access to care for vulnerable populations. She completed both her undergraduate and medical degrees in the state where she grew up at the University of Kansas. She then completed her internal medicine residency at Stanford, followed by a general medicine research fellowship at UCSF. She has several years of hospitalist experience at both Denver Health and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Her current work focuses on the evaluation of Colorado's recent health reform efforts with the purpose of expanding insurance access. She is interested in learning whether such efforts improve outcomes and reduce health care costs.
Jordan Wyrwa, DO is an Assistant Professor and practicing Pediatric Physiatrist with the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at CU and with the Department of Rehabilitation at Children’s Hospital Colorado. His research is currently focused on the longitudinal outcomes of pediatric patients with disorders of consciousness (e.g., coma). His overall career goal is to enhance our ability to estimate functional prognoses for these patients to ultimately facilitate prognostic enrichment of clinical trials to test interventions aimed at improving their long-term functional outcomes. Through the SCORE Fellowship, he hopes to develop the necessary knowledge and skills to successfully design and conduct this research while also securing extramural funding.
Please join us in congratulating Drs. Abbott, Burnett, Knees, Stall, Welles and Wyrwa! We’re honored they chose our program to further hone their health services research skills as clinician scientists.
SCORE Update July 2024
The SCORE Fellowship (Surgical/Subspecialist Clinical Outcomes Research Fellowship; Program Director: Jacinda Nicklas, MD, MPH, MA) is a two year-program designed for junior and mid-career faculty to obtain training in clinical outcomes research. The fellowship’s main components include research and faculty development didactic work, weekly work-in-progress sessions, mentoring of research projects (including full biostatistical and analytic support), and an intensive grant writing course for second year fellows with the goal of a completed grant (e.g., K award) for submission.
Since the SCORE Fellowship’s inception in 2014 with the first graduating class finishing fellowship in the summer of 2016, we have graduated 39 faculty scholars to date. On July 8th 2024, after our first work-in-progress session of the fellowship year, our program hosted an event at Dr. Nicklas’ residence to welcome our new cohort of first year fellows (to be announced in our next update) and to celebrate our seven new exceptional graduates who completed fellowship at the end of June: Drs. Anna Abrams (Pediatric Emergency Medicine), Aubrey Armento (Pediatric Sports Medicine), Rachel Cafferty (Pediatric Emergency), Krista Eschbach (Pediatric Neurology), Kweku Hazel (Surgery), Ryan Kammeyer (Pediatric Neurology) and Kristina Malik (General Academic Pediatrics). Please read on below for a summary of our 2024 graduates’ research work and their next steps transitioning from the Fellowship:
Dr. Abrams’ research examines the impact of law enforcement presence in the pediatric emergency department on care delivery and health outcomes. Her SCORE project developed and validated a multivariable EHR-based model that predicts law enforcement presence during emergency department encounters. During her time as a fellow, she was awarded 1) the Ergen Family Pilot award, supporting qualitative interviews with pediatric emergency medicine physicians and nurses and 2) an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) funded PEDSnet Scholars Award which will support her research efforts over the next 2-years as she examines the prevalence and impact of law enforcement officers in the emergency department at multiple sites.
Dr. Armento’s research focus is on the female athlete triad in adolescents. Her SCORE project involved assessing differences in cardiovascular disease risk factors between adolescent female athletes with and without menstrual irregularities. Her plans after SCORE are to continue with the CCTSI K12 program and apply for an NIH K23 award with a study examining physical activity and bone health in female adolescents with restrictive eating disorders.
Dr. Cafferty’s research program is focused on improving suicide outcomes for children and adolescents, through evidence-based screening and interventions in the Emergency Department (ED). Her primary SCORE project involved qualitative methods to examine child and caregiver perspectives of suicide risk screening in the ED and desired resources prior to ED discharge. Dr. Cafferty’s research is currently funded through the Research Scholar Award (Child Health Research Enterprise), which she will continue after SCORE. She plans to apply for an NIMH K23 award, using community participatory research methods to co-design a strengths-based intervention for linking children with elevated suicide risk to outpatient mental health services at ED discharge.
Dr. Eschbach’s research focus is on longitudinal outcomes after status epilepticus, specifically new-onset refractory status epilepticus (NORSE). Her SCORE project consisted of qualitative interviews and described the long-term lived experience of patients with NORSE and their caregivers. After SCORE, she plans to apply for an NIH K23 award with a research proposal focused on health-related quality of life in children after status epilepticus. She will be involved in research leadership as Associate Research Director for the Neuroscience Institute at Children’s Hospital Colorado.
Dr. Hazel’s SCORE project was an analysis of the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program’s (MBSAQIP) dataset to examine variations in the choice of bariatric surgery among different racial and ethnic groups. He is now leading a research project funded by a 2-year NIH supplement, which centers on analyzing the secretomes of different fatty tissue deposits and assessing how weight loss affects these secretomes and their impact on muscle insulin sensitivity across diverse ethnic groups. Dr. Hazel intends to apply for a career development award within a year of completing SCORE.
Dr. Kammeyer’s research focus is on the neurologic and psychiatric complications of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). His SCORE project involved evaluation of blood-based biomarkers of brain injury in persons with SLE with and without neuropsychiatric symptoms, to aid in diagnosis and treatment monitoring. Since completing the SCORE Fellowship, he has entered the Clinical Faculty Scholars Program through the CCTSI, and will be applying for career development awards focused on evaluation of clinical measures and biomarkers to aid early diagnosis and treatment of cognitive dysfunction in pediatric SLE.
Dr Malik’s research focuses on improving preventive care for children with chronic medical conditions and disabilities. Her SCORE projects included describing the national prevalence of mental health and dental diagnoses in children with medical complexity and understanding the concept of medical home for children with medical complexity through perspective of their parents. This latter work was funded through an Early Investigator award from CYSHCNet. After SCORE, she plans to apply for an NIH K23 to develop a healthy lifestyle intervention focusing on physical activity to be delivered in primary care for children with medical complexity.
Congratulations, Drs. Abrams, Armento, Cafferty, Eschbach, Hazel, Kammeyer and Malik! The SCORE Fellowship faculty are proud of you and all you have accomplished!
For information about the SCORE Fellowship, please contact the Program Manager, Rebecca Speer, MA, at Rebecca.Speer@cuanschutz.edu.
SCORE Update April 2024
The SCORE Fellowship (Surgical/Subspecialist Clinical Outcomes Research Fellowship; Program Director: Jacinda Nicklas, MD, MPH) is designed for junior and mid-career faculty looking to obtain training in clinical outcomes research. We currently have 13 fellows in the program, with seven on track to finish the program at the end of June. In this update, we would like to showcase some recent accomplishments of two of our second-year fellows, Drs. Anna Abrams and Rachel Cafferty. Dr. Abrams recently was awarded the Ergen Pilot grant award and Dr. Cafferty’s research is supported by an institutional career development award, the Research Innovation Scholar Award. Both have recently published perspective pieces in their areas of focus:
Anna Abrams, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics in Section of Emergency Medicine. In November of 2023, she was awarded the Ergen Family Chair in Pediatrics Outcomes Research Pilot Award, providing her with $30,000 for the 2024 calendar year to conduct a study on law enforcement officer (LEO) involvement during pediatric emergency department (ED) encounters and related clinical outcomes. Dr. Abrams notes that the roles of LEOs in the ED is vague and variable; frequent LEO presence in the ED during patient care presents important questions about patient privacy, medical and legal priorities, and the rights of pediatric patients without guardians present. Further, given many known racial disparities in both pediatric ED outcomes and in community policing, LEO presence in the ED may exacerbate known disparities in health outcomes. Her study arose from the observation that despite these potential pediatric health implications, the few prior existing studies have been limited to adult patients and none examine LEO prevalence or impact on outcomes but rather clinician perspectives. Dr. Abrams’ investigation will thus attempt to 1) leverage a novel key-word algorithm to create a probabilistic model that accurately identifies law enforcement presence in the EHR and 2) identify key clinical outcomes impacted by LEO presence as perceived by pediatric emergency medicine physicians and LEOs via qualitative interviews. Her investigation will lay the foundation for a career development award exploring racial disparities in clinical outcomes related to LEO presence in the pediatric ED and eventually the development of standardized policies to guide LEO interactions in treatment spaces to facilitate optimal and equitable care for all children. Dr. Abrams recently published a perspectives article on the importance of this topic in the journal of Academic Emergency Medicine, which can be found at the following link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/acem.14901
Rachel Cafferty, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Section of Emergency Medicine. In December of 2023, she was awarded the Research Innovation Scholar Award at Children’s Hospital Colorado, which provides $100,000/year to support her ongoing research aimed at improving suicide outcomes for children. Dr. Cafferty’s research primarily centers on standardizing suicide risk screening in the ED and designing interventions to connect children and adolescents to outpatient mental health care at ED discharge. This work is influenced by the neighborhood in which pediatric patients live and other sociodemographic, cultural, and language factors. Dr. Cafferty recognizes that suicide prevention requires community engagement – we cannot change suicide outcomes for youth without the support of community partners and advocates. Dr. Cafferty also notes that she has been frustrated herself as an ED provider by the limited training she has received in providing evidence-based compassionate care to youth at heightened risk for suicide. She was encouraged by SCORE faculty to write a perspective piece as a way of bringing greater attention to her research areas of interest. The article on her viewpoint, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), provides an ED perspective on the youth mental health crisis in the US and offers recommendations for standardizing suicide screening (leveraging technology when possible), as well as expanding research in the area of neighborhood level factors and community engaged/participatory research in this field. You can read her article at the following link: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2813594
Please join us in congratulating Drs. Adams and Cafferty on these accomplishments. The SCORE faculty are proud of these clinician-investigators and their achievements during their two years in the SCORE fellowship!
For information on the SCORE Fellowship, please contact the Program Manager, Rebecca Speer, MA, at Rebecca.Speer@cuanschutz.edu.
SCORE Update January 2024
The SCORE Fellowship (Surgical/Subspecialist Clinical Outcomes Research Fellowship; Program Director: Jacinda Nicklas, MD, MPH) is currently recruiting for the July 2024 cohort with a start date of July 8th. This fellowship is designed for junior and mid-career faculty looking to obtain training in clinical outcomes research. The two-year program consists of weekly didactic training, weekly work-in-progress sessions with faculty mentors, peers, and quantitative and qualitative methods experts, 1:1 mentoring, and an intensive grant writing course for second year fellows with the goal of a completed grant (e.g., K award) for submission. Additional components of the program include full biostastical and analytical support for projects, a career development curriculum, and access to additional ACCORDS resources. The fellowship requires a commitment of at least 50% protected time, support from the applicant’s Division/Department and availability on Monday afternoons for didactic lectures and work-in-progress (WIP) sessions.
Since the SCORE Fellowship’s inception in 2014, we have graduated 32 faculty scholars. Within five years of SCORE completion, our 32 graduates have published roughly 1,100 peer-reviewed manuscripts in top general medical and specialty journals, and have obtained over $45 million in grant funding from federal, foundation, industry and institutional sources. 86% of graduates at least 5 years out from SCORE completion have received federally-funded K or internal career development award, and 56% of all SCORE graduates have a career development award. The application deadline for the new cohort beginning in July 2024 is March 15, 2024. If you know of anyone who may be interested and a good fit, please help us spread the word. For additional questions regarding logistics, cost, how to apply or details about current and previous fellows, please contact the Program Manager, Rebecca Speer, MA, at Rebecca.Speer@cuanschutz.edu.
SCORE Update October 2023
The SCORE Fellowship (Surgical/Subspecialist Clinical Outcomes Research Fellowship; Program Director: Jacinda Nicklas, MD, MPH, MA) is designed for junior and mid-career faculty to obtain training in clinical outcomes research. The two-year program consists of didactic work, mentoring of research projects, and an intensive grant writing course for second year fellows with the goal of a completed grant (e.g., K award) for submission. Additional components of the program include full biostatistical and analytical support for projects, a career development curriculum, and access to additional ACCORDS resources. The fellowship requires a commitment of at least 50% protected time, support from the applicant’s Division/Department and availability on Monday afternoons for didactic lectures and work-in-progress (WIP) sessions.
Since the SCORE Fellowship’s inception in 2014 with its first graduates completing the research training program in 2016, we have graduated 32 faculty scholars to date. Most recently in June of 2023, five new outstanding graduates completed fellowship: Drs. Erin Bredenberg (Hospital Medicine), Jessica Sanders (Pediatric Neurology), Cristina Sarmiento (Pediatric Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation), Camille Stewart (Surgical Oncology), and Jeniann Yi (Vascular Surgery).
Since completing the SCORE Fellowship, Dr. Bredenberg has been working on completing current research initiatives, including a qualitative study exploring provider perspectives on barriers and facilitators to hepatitis C treatment, and a study to assess disparities in initiation of therapy and completion of treatment amount people with different types of substance use disorders. She hopes to continue to develop her research portfolio and hone her research interests over the next year, and then apply for the Clinical Faculty Scholars Program to work toward obtaining a career development award.
Drs. Sanders and Sarmiento are currently in their first year of the Clinical Faculty Scholars Program. Since finishing fellowship, Dr. Sanders is applying what she’s learned during SCORE and writing up papers from her SCORE project, applying for grants that include a career development award and internal awards, and is benefitting from her participation in the Clinical Faculty Scholars Program. Similarly, Dr. Sarmiento is using the strong foundation in health services research and an excellent mentorship network she obtained during the SCORE Fellowship to continue to focus on submitting an NIH career development award application, with the goal of submitting in June of 2024.
Dr. Stewart has been continuing work on her Institute of Cannabis Research grant, and she continues her research work on the effects of cannabinoids in melanoma with funding from the Cancer League of Colorado and a career development award from the National Cancer Institute Early-Stage Surgeon Scientist Program.
Dr. Yi will be presenting her SCORE project at a national informatics conference later this year and submitting the manuscript early next year. She continues to participate in work-in-progress sessions through ACCORDS and has started the Dissemination and Implementation Science Graduate Certificate Program. She is working on society grant applications and plans to submit a career development award next year.
Congratulations, Drs. Bredenberg, Sanders, Sarmiento, Stewart, and Yi! The SCORE Fellowship faculty are proud of you and all you have accomplished!
For information about the SCORE Fellowship, please contact the Program Manager, Rebecca Speer, MA, at Rebecca.Speer@cuanschutz.edu.
September 2022
The Surgical/Subspecialists Clinical Outcomes Research (SCORE) Fellowship proudly announces our new Program Director, Jacinda Nicklas, MD, MPH, MA, who took over the role from Stacie Daugherty, MD, MSPH effective July 1, 2022. Dr. Daugherty transferred to the Kaiser Institute for Health Research as a Senior Clinical Investigator in February of this year, though she retains her role as a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the University, and we are grateful she remains a Co-Director on SCORE for the current fiscal year.
The SCORE Fellowship’s new Program Director, Dr. Nicklas, is an Associate Professor at the University in the School of Medicine. She received her MD from Harvard Medical School and completed her residency in internal medicine and primary care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health and completed her clinical research fellowship in Integrative Medicine and General Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Nicklas completed the NIH-funded Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) K12 award, and completed a K23 career development award funded by the NIH National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. She has served as a co-PI and site-PI on several multi-site clinical trials. She practices both primary care and obesity medicine, and her research focuses on lifestyle interventions for patients at elevated cardiometabolic risk using websites, apps, and lifestyle interventions. Prior to taking on the Directorship for SCORE, Dr. Nicklas was a Co-Director for the fellowship for three years; given her experience and participation in SCORE, we know the fellowship is in good hands with her at the helm.
Also in July, James A. Feinstein, MD, MPH joined the SCORE Fellowship as a Co-Director. Dr. Feinstein is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and a Principal Investigator at ACCORDS. He practices in the Children’s Hospital Colorado Special Care Clinic and is the Pediatric Director of a nationally recognized Epidermolysis Bullosa Multidisciplinary Program for children with genetic skin blistering disorders. As a fellowship-trained health services researcher with over 15 years of experience, Dr. Feinstein has successfully led multiple epidemiological and health services research studies focused on children with medical complexity, neurologic impairment, and pediatric polypharmacy. He is currently the PI for a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development K23 Patient-Centered Career Development award to study the longitudinal measurement of symptoms in children exposed to polypharmacy. He is also Chair of the Colorado Medicaid Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, Co-Chair of the Children’s Hospital Association Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Safety Workgroup, and Member of the NIH’s Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (BPCA) Pharmacoepidemiology Workgroup. The SCORE Fellowship’s faculty and staff is grateful to have him as a part of our team.
SCORE is off to a great start this year, with seven new fellows starting the program in July, joining five second year fellows (Drs. Erin Bredenberg, Jessica Solomon Sanders, Cristina Sarmiento, Camille Stewart, and Jeniann Yi) who will graduate next June. Please see below for a brief introduction to each of the fabulous fellows in our new cohort and their research interests:
Anna Abrams, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatric Emergency Medicine. Her long-term research goal is to become an independent clinical investigator focused on reducing racial health disparities to improve pediatric health outcomes, specifically through the development and implementation of novel interventions that promote effective and equitable care for acutely ill and injured children in pre-hospital and emergency settings.
Aubrey Armento, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopedics. As a clinician scientist, she ultimately plans to develop an innovative and successful independent research program with a focus on relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S), eating disorders, and bone health among adolescent athletes.
Rachel Cafferty, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatric Emergency Medicine. Her research interests have evolved to the prioritization of mental health access and care for youth, with a specific focus on improving suicide screening and prevention efforts for young patients in the Emergency Department.
Krista Eschbach, MD is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Child Neurology and the Medical Director of the Children’s Hospital Colorado Neurodiagnostic Technology Certificate Program. Her research centers on the long-term neurocognitive and quality of life outcomes associated with new-onset refractory status epilepticus (NORSE) and febrile infection-related epilepsy syndrome (FIRES).
Kweku Hazel, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery. His research aspirations involve using community-based participatory research and dissemination and implementation research methods to advance socially responsible surgery in order to increase equitable access to bariatric surgical care, while integrating social determinants of health into surgical education, practice and research.
Ryan Kammeyer, MD, MSE is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Child Neurology. As a neuroimmunologist, he plans to build a comprehensive research program focused on the identification of biochemical and immunologic markers of organic, inflammatory brain disease in neuropsychiatric syndromes and the assessment of immunotherapy regimens on patient-focused outcome measures, including quality of life, cognitive and psychologic dysfunction, and educational/employment attainment.
Kristina Malik, MD is an Assistant Professor in Pediatrics in the Division of General Academic Pediatrics and the Medical Director of KidStreet at Children’s Hospital Colorado. Her primary research goal is to develop an integrated preventive oral health framework tailored to the unique needs of children with medical complexity (CMC) through the exploration of which interventions best improve clinical outcomes and implementation research to ensure patient-centered systemic uptake.
Please join us in congratulating Drs. Abrams, Armento, Cafferty, Eschbach, Hazel, Kammeyer and Malik! We’re honored they chose our program to further hone their health services research skills.
For more information on the SCORE Fellowship, please visit our website at: https://medschool.cuanschutz.edu/accords/research-publications/research-training/score-fellowship
January 2022
The SCORE Fellowship (Surgical/Subspecialist Clinical Outcomes Research Fellowship; Program Director: Stacie Daugherty, MD, MSPH) is currently recruiting for the July 1, 2022 cohort. This fellowship is designed for junior and mid-career faculty looking to obtain training in clinical outcomes research. The two-year program consists of didactic work, mentoring of research projects, and an intensive grant writing course for second-year fellows with the goal of a completed grant (e.g., K award) for submission. Additional components of the program include full biostatistical and analytical support for projects, a career development curriculum, and access to additional ACCORDS resources. The fellowship requires a commitment of at least 50% protected time, support from the applicant’s Division/Department, and availability on Monday afternoons for didactic lectures and work-in-progress (WIP) sessions.
Since the SCORE Fellowship’s inception in 2014, we have graduated 21 faculty scholars. Our 21 graduates have published more than 665 peer-reviewed manuscripts in top general medical and specialty journals, and have obtained over $19.2 million in grant funding from federal, foundation, industry, and institutional sources. To date, nine have received individual career development awards.
The application deadline for the new cohort beginning in July 2022 is March 15, 2022. If you know of anyone who may be interested and a good fit, please help us spread the word. For additional questions regarding logistics, cost, how to apply, or details about current and previous fellows, please contact the Program Manager, Rebecca Speer, MA, at Rebecca.Speer@cuanschutz.edu.
September 2021
The Surgical/Subspecialists Clinical Outcomes Research (SCORE) Fellowship is off to a great start again this year. Five new fellows started the program in July of 2021, joining six second year fellows who will graduate next June. In this edition, the Fellowship Co-Directors are pleased to announce our latest cohort of impressive scholars: Drs. Erin Bredenberg, Jessica Solomon Sanders, Cristina Sarmiento, Camille Stewart and Jeniann Yi. Please see below for a brief introduction to each trainee and what they plan to accomplish in their two years in the SCORE Fellowship:
Erin Bredenberg, MD, MPH is an academic hospitalist who is passionate about care for underserved populations. Her research interests are in factors that affect the care of patients with substance use disorders and those experiencing housing insecurity. She joins the SCORE Fellowship with the goals of further focusing her research interests and gaining concrete skills in data analysis, epidemiologic methods, and qualitative research.
Jessica Solomon Sanders, MD recently became faculty at the University of Colorado upon completion of a 6-year residency program specializing in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities through Boston Children’s Hospital and the adult hospitals affiliated with Harvard Medical School. Her principal career goal is to enhance the lives of children and adults with neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDD) by improving and expanding age-appropriate, specialized healthcare opportunities and interventions. More specifically, she hopes the SCORE Fellowship will advance her goal of developing, evaluating, and disseminating best practices and patient outcomes from a novel clinic for adults with NDD and conducting programmatic educational research to improve medical providers’ confidence to care for this adult population.
Cristina Sarmiento, MD completed her residency training in June 2021 in Pediatrics and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and has always been motivated by the goal of being an advocate for patients and for individuals of varying abilities at large. She joins the SCORE Fellowship with the following three objectives: to develop the skills, knowledge, and experience to launch a career as a clinician researcher; to conduct interventions that improve clinical care, health and functional outcomes for patients with disabilities; and to build bridges between her clinical work and research endeavors, that in turn strengthen both parts of her career. Cristina is particularly interested improving care at the time of transition from pediatric- to adult-based care for adolescents and young adults with disabilities.
Camille Stewart, MD is an Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Division of Surgical Oncology. She loves teaching and conducting research, in addition to her clinical practice operating on patients diagnosed with cancer. Her research goals are to lead and perform prospective clinical research projects with basic science elements that have a positive impact on her patients’ treatment and outcomes. More specifically, she is interested in elucidating the potential roles of medical cannabis in the management of post-operative pain, and its relationship to postoperative outcomes, particularly for patients with cancer who may require multiple major operations.
Jeniann Yi, MD, MSCS is an academic vascular surgeon and informaticist. Her research combines clinical outcomes in treating complex aortic and cerebrovascular disease with advanced endovascular techniques with her background in informatics to define and implement high value surgical care. She is specifically interested in the cost of advanced endovascular technology on health systems, antithrombotic medication management following interventions, and vascular imaging regimens for surveillance. Her goals for the SCORE Fellowship include learning more about how to combine clinical outcomes with patient-reported outcomes and cost/efficiency metrics when designing studies, and how to successfully collect and/or extract these data points from large datasets, such as EMR. She also hopes to gain practical skills in implementation science and qualitative research.
Please join us in congratulating Drs. Bredenberg, Sanders, Sarmiento, Stewart, and Yi! We’re honored they chose our program to further hone their health services research skills.
For more information on the SCORE Fellowship, please click HERE.
June 2021
The Surgical/Subspecialist Clinical Outcomes Research Fellowship (SCORE) Fellowship Co-Directors proudly announce the seven scholars who graduate from our program effective June 30, 2021: Drs. Shannon Acker, Leigh Anne Bakel, Jessica Bloom, Jillian Cotter, Ana Gleisner, Michelle Leppert, and Justin Lockwood. Please read below for a brief introduction to each of our outstanding graduates and their research interests:
Shannon Acker, MD is an Assistant Professor of Surgery whose research is focused on clinical outcomes in pediatric surgical care. She has conducted multiple single and multi-center retrospective reviews assessing value and waste in pediatric surgical care, and is currently writing a grant proposal that centers on evaluating cost variation in the operating room through a mixed methods approach with the ultimate goal of designing and pilot testing an intervention that aims to deliver optimal surgical care at a reduced expense. Her current additional research projects include: leading a multi-center prospective observational study of the use of contrast based protocols for the management of pediatric small bowel obstruction, characterizing pneumatosis intestinalis in pediatric patients, management of pediatric blunt solid organ injury, and overuse of preoperative type and screening in neonates undergoing general surgical procedures.
Leigh Anne Bakel, MD, MSc is an Assistant Professor of Pediatric Hospital Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Medical Director of Clinical Effectiveness and Director of the Clinical Pathways program at Children’s Hospital Colorado. She was recently accepted into the national PEDSnet K12 program as an institutionally funded scholar. Her previous projects included a national survey on clinical pathway programs and development of a novel measure of variation of care through the Children’s Hospital Association. Her current research evaluates clinical pathway implementation using novel third party software to visualize and create actionable clinical pathways in our electronic health record, as well as measures clinical and patient factors influencing provider adherence. She also plans to incorporate perspectives of patients and families on knowledge of clinical pathways.
Jessica Bloom, MD come July will begin her new role as Assistant Professor of Pediatrics within the Rheumatology section with 75% protected time for research. She will also start a two-year fellowship in clinical investigation through the Vasculitis Clinical Research Consortium (VCRC)-Vasculitis Foundation (VF) during which she plans to expand the pediatric patient presence within the VCRC, VF, and Vasculitis Patient-Powered Research Network and assess the impact of age at disease-onset on clinical manifestations and outcomes. She recently completed her Master of Science in Clinical Science and received funding from the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance and Arthritis Foundation to characterize Eosinophilic Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis in children.
Jillian Cotter, MD, MSCS is an Assistant Professor in Pediatric Hospital Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She is interested in high-value care, specifically related to diagnostic and antibiotic stewardship for common infections among hospitalized children. Her AHRQ K08 proposal aims to explore factors that influence antibiotic decision making for children hospitalized with community acquired pneumonia (CAP) with the goal of developing and pilot testing an intervention to improve guideline-adherent treatment and safely reduce unnecessary antibiotics.
Ana Gleisner, MD, PhD is surgical oncologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine whose main interest is to promote the uptake of evidence-based practices and shared decision making to decrease variability in care and improve the outcomes of patients with cancer. With a unique perspective as a surgeon, she focuses on identifying low-value cancer-related surgical procedures that are still commonly performed and finding determinants for the de-implementation of these procedures.
Michelle Leppert, MD, MBA is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology who is currently funded by an institutional KL2 award at the Colorado Clinical and Translation Science Institute. This institutional award, along with a K23 proposal she has written, will allow her to explore the risk factors of stroke in young adults using Colorado’s All Payer Claims Database and the American Heart Association’s Get with the Guidelines Stroke Registry. If funded, the K23 proposal she is drafting will further afford her first-hand experience applying study design and extending datasets by linking multiple heterogeneous sources, as well as satisfy the thesis requirement to complete the Master’s of Health Services Research degree.
Justin Lockwood, MD, MSCS is an Assistant Professor of Hospital Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at University of Colorado School of Medicine and the Medical Director of Hospital Medicine for Children’s Hospital Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. His research focuses on improving care for deteriorating children in the hospital by leveraging clinical data and implementation science principles to disseminate best practices, develop effective interventions, and perform pragmatic trials to test their implementation. He is currently writing an AHRQ R03 grant proposal aiming to define stakeholder-centered, consensus outcomes for future rapid response system research.
For additional questions regarding logistics, how to apply, or details about current and previous fellows, please contact Becca Speer. You can also check out the SCORE Fellowship HERE.