Center leadership is provided by the Directors Catarina I. Kiefe, Ph.D., M.D., and Norman W. Weissman, Ph.D. Together these individuals bring extensive background and experience in research development and administration and the application of outcomes and effectiveness research methodologies.
Directors
Catarina
I. Kiefe, Ph.D., M.D.,
is Professor and Director, Division of Preventive Medicine, School of
Medicine. She is also Professor of Biostatistics in the School of Public
Health. Dr. Kiefe is a clinical epidemiologist with considerable methodological
expertise in health services research, especially in the areas of quality
measurement and ethnic disparities in health care. She is currently the
Principal Investigator on a 5-year interdisciplinary grant funded by the
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) that tests new data-driven
methodology to improve care for ambulatory patients who have sustained
a myocardial infarction. Dr. Kiefe also directs the Deep South Effectiveness
Research TREP, a research unit funded by the Veterans Administration
HSR&D Service. In addition, Dr. Kiefe is Associate
Director of the Coordinating Center of CARDIA, a multi-center NHLBI funded
study. She also chairs the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center's Outcomes
Research and Planning Committee and directs the methodology core of the
UAB Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Center. Dr. Kiefe is Director of the
UAB Health Services and Outcomes Research Training Program an institutional
training grant funded by AHRQ. In addition, Dr. Kiefe is a VA Senior Quality
Scholar, Senior Scientist in the Center for Aging and Lister Hill Center
for Health Policy Fellow. She serves as the consulting epidemiologist
for the Alabama Quality Assurance Foundation (AQAF), the organization
that monitors the quality of care for Alabama's Medicare patients. Dr.
Kiefe has published widely and served on multiple study sections and national
committees dealing with outcomes research. Dr. Kiefe received her
Ph.D. in Mathematics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook,
her M.D. from University of California, San Francisco, and completed her
residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of Minnesota.
Norman
W. Weissman, Ph.D., is a
Professor in the Department of Health Services
Administration and in the Division of Preventive Medicine at the University
of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Dr. Weissman is Director of the UAB Center
for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and Education and co-Director
of the Deep South Effectiveness Research Program at the Birmingham VA
Medical Center. He, also, holds UAB appointments as Senior Scientist
at the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy, the Center for Nursing Research
and the Center for Disaster Preparedness. His current research activities
include key participation on several active Federal research grants including:
1) Cancer Outcomes
Research Study on Colorectal and Lung Cancer Site (NCI), 2) MI-Plus:
Web Enhanced Post-MI + Comorbidity Guidelines (NHLBI), 3) Musculoskeletal
Disease Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics (FDA/AHRQ),
4) An Internet Intervention to Increase Chlamydia Screening (AHRQ), 5)
UAB Center for the Study of Bioterrorism (AHRQ), 6) Preparing VA Clinicians
for Bioterrorist Attacks (VA), 7) Improving Quality of Care in Steroid
Induced Osteoporosis (NIAMS) and 8) Costs of Screening for Colorectal
Cancer (CDC).
Prior to moving to UAB in 1995, he spent twenty-four years in the U.S. Public Health Service, most of them as Director of Extramural Research at predecessor organizations of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). He is a member of the Editorial Committee of the International Journal for Quality in Health Care, an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Technology Assessment in Healthcare, and a consultant on health services research to many governmental agencies and private organizations. He is currently a member of national advisory committees for the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the National Center for Health Statistics and the National Library of Medicine