Meet Our Team | Center for Healthcare Policy and Research

CHPR project managers manage a variety of projects, including multi-site, randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, and qualitative investigations, that involve complex data analyses. Project managers work with researchers at UC Davis and other institutions to optimize project resources, supervise research staff, develop study recruitment and enrollment protocols, manage IRB submissions and modifications, and prepare research manuscripts and reports.

CHPR’s health policy analysts conduct systematic and rapid evidence reviews. These analysts also staff the California Health Benefits Review Program (CHBRP) projects, providing rapid (within 60 days) medical effectiveness and public health impact analyses of proposed health insurance legislation for the California State Legislature. Health policy staff members also give annual guest lectures on health policy topics to first- and second-year medical students and for the MIND Institute, and also train UC colleagues in conducting systematic reviews.

Research assistants support PI and project team members with developing surveys; conducting online, in-person and telephone surveys; entering and analyzing data; conducting secondary research and drafting reports or manuscripts. Other areas of experience among our staff include: 

• training and managing simulated patients
• recruiting and enrolling diverse patient populations
• engaging research subjects in a variety of interventions

Led by CHPR researcher Daniel Tancredi, CHPR statisticians and data analysts assist researchers in developing effective study designs and analytic plans for clinical research studies including cluster-randomized trials, longitudinal studies, and surveys that use complex, probability sampling techniques. They conduct complex analyses of large datasets including national, state, and insurance datasets. They have experience with a wide variety of biostatistical, psychometric, and econometric applications, including instrument development and validation and the specification and interpretation of regression models for multilevel, time-series, and panel data.

CHPR’s prevention and community-based researchers advance health and well-being at both the individual and population levels by conducting applied research in prevention and population health. Many of these staff are based in the Prevention Policy & Practice Group (3PG), one of the programs within CHPR, but are also represented by other faculty affiliates and personnel. Such researchers focus on improving social determinants including: healthy eating, active living, stress management, and tobacco cessation in a whole health context.

CHPR’s qualitative research team members, trained and led by Melissa Gosdin, Ph.D., work with principal investigators within the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and on the main UC Davis campus, investigating a wide variety of topics. Specific studies focusing on doctor/patient interactions, opioid tapering, barriers and facilitators to improving healthcare delivery, social isolation and its relationship to chronic pain, life context in primary care, sexual assault and HIV prevention, smoking cessation, collaborative depression care, and impacts of COVID-19 on frontline physicians are examples of current and recent research conducted by our qualitative team.

CHPR has staff expertise in ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM/PCS coding and has provided support for the AHRQ Quality Indicators conversion project and for development/implementation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) morbidity surveillance measures for ICD-10-CM/PCS. Staff have also reviewed indicator specifications to support proposed ICD-10 maps as participants on expert panels.

CHPR administrative staff assist faculty researchers with a variety of research-related tasks, including:

• identifying appropriately skilled, available CHPR staff for research projects
• maintaining compliance for grant and human subject reviews
• managing project budgets
• identifying funding opportunities
• assisting with grant development