Research | Center for Healthcare Policy and Research | UC Davis Health

This $6.4 million study is led by Stephen Henry, a professor of internal medicine, and sponsored by Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. The study compares rates of establishing outpatient opioid use disorder treatment to determine whether patients referred to telehealth treatment versus in-person treatment have better patient outcomes and experiences. 

Remote Monitoring for Equity in Advancing Control of Hypertension (REACH) is a $2.2 million study led by CHPR Director Courtney Lyles. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, this project is testing patient support for home blood pressure monitoring, with the goal of varying clinical pharmacist outreach and support. 

Championing Hypertension Remote Monitoring for Equity and Dissemination (CHARMED) is a $355,048 study led by CHPR Director Courtney Lyles and funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Researchers are assessing patient-facing and clinic-based strategies to equitably improve hypertension treatment and management across 25 safety net primary care clinics in San Francisco, Ventura, and Contra Costa counties. 

This $4 million clinical trial is led by Michelle Dossett, associate professor of internal medicine, and sponsored by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Aging. This clinical trial seeks to understand the characteristics of clinic visits that affect health outcomes for patients with knee osteoarthritis using topical diclofenac gel. 

This $1 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is led by Joshua Fenton, a professor of family and community medicine. The project seeks to help address the opioid overdose crisis by assessing CA Bridge, an initiative to expand medication for addiction treatment in emergency departments. Our staff provide patient recruitment and qualitative methodology expertise. 

This $5.6 million clinical trial is led by Stephen Henry, a professor of internal medicine, and sponsored by National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Drug Abuse. This study will advance efforts to improve long-term buprenorphine treatment rates for low-income and other vulnerable patients who disproportionately seek opioid use disorder care in emergency departments.  

This $1.5 million project is led by Michelle Dossett, associate professor of internal medicine, and sponsored by Brigham and Women's Hospital and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This project addresses the critical gaps and multiple variables that directly impact bilingualism and cognitive reserve and progression of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias with three specific aims. 

This $1 million study is led by Joshua Fenton, a professor of family and community medicine, and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This study identifies the risk and protective factors connected to the combination of opioids and benzodiazepines use, a group of drugs used to treat anxiety and insomnia. 

The California Department of Public Health supports this $496,000 study led by Aimee Moulin, a nationally recognized expert in the treatment of substance use disorders. This project evaluates six fentanyl pilot programs across California to assess efforts addressing fentanyl and opioid use. The evaluation will focus on initiatives such as school-based education, expanded fentanyl testing, overdose prevention and recovery programs, and increased access to social and substance use recovery services. Elizabeth Magnan, a professor at UC Davis School of Medicine, and Melissa Gosdin, a CHPR qualitative researcher, serve as co-investigators. 

Na’amah Razon, an assistant professor and family medicine physician, leads this $1.1 million study supported by the California Department of Public Health. Using qualitative interviews with low-income people with dementia and their family caregivers in who are migrants, Razon’s project aims to improve our understanding of the experiences and needs of people with dementia and their caregivers.

UC Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program supports this $810,000 study led by epidemiologist Iraklis Erik Tseregounis. This project will develop and test an intervention connecting existing inpatient substance use disorder patients with pharmacist-mediated tobacco treatment. 

This $575,050 project is led by professor and family medicine physician Na'amah Razon and funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases. It assesses how different modes of transportation can impact patient access to hemodialysis. Razon and Bethney Bonilla from the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research discussed their work in a podcast with the National Kidney Foundation (NKF). 

Primary care physician Na’amah Razon leads this $189,000 project supported by the NIH National Institute on Aging. Through ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, observations, and stakeholder engagement in Sacramento and Central Valley primary care settings, the project aims to better understand challenges and opportunities in building primary care workforce capacity for dementia diagnosis and care.

The American Heart Association funds this $231,000 study led by assistant professor and primary care physician Abigail Arons. This project addresses a critical gap in cardiometabolic disease prevention among emerging adults by developing a non-clinical screening tool—and a scalable approach to using the tool—in a community college setting to identify emerging adults at high-risk of cardiometabolic disease and connect them to preventive care. 

CHPR postdoctoral scholar Lina Tieu leads this $159,000 study funded by the American Heart Association. This research examines electronic health record data, organizational surveys, and interviews from 25 primary care clinics within three large safety net health systems within California to improve hypertension treatment through self-measured blood pressure monitoring. 

Vanderbilt University Medical Center and BridgeBio Pharma LLC support this $118,000 study led by UC Davis Health pharmacist David Mitchell. The project quantifies the time from prescription to initiation of acoramidis therapy across health system specialty pharmacies while assessing patient access metrics and patient and provider satisfaction.  

This $174,000 study is led by CHPR researcher Monika Ray and funded by Yale University and Palmer College of Chiropractic. Ray and her team use unsupervised learning and explainable machine learning methods on a large national claims dataset (2016–2023) to identify patterns of chiropractic care.