1) Name of activity:

PROGRAM FOR HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH
Department of Preventive Medicine
New Jersey Medical School

2. Project Chairs and email address:    

Usha Sambamoorthi, PhD – ushasambamoorthi@gmail.com
Leonard M Pogach, MD, MBA – Len.pogach@verizon.net ; Leonard.pogach@va.gov

3. Brief statement of mission and/or vision:

The mission of the division is to facilitate better healthcare using evidenced-based science through teaching, research, and other activities. The division will focus on topics of health services research (HSR) that are currently important in areas of public health, population health and public policy. These areas include, but are not limited to, access to healthcare, health insurance, understanding and eliminating health disparities, health outcomes, utilization, and expenditures. The program will have a truly multidisciplinary nature with partners from academia, the private healthcare delivery sector, government agencies, and community-based organizations.

The division will foster collaboration/interaction between NJMS/SPH staff, students and trainees, and researchers the VA New Jersey Healthcare System Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management consistent with the prior MOA.

4. Collaborators, staff and faculty by name and email:

Co-chairs

Usha Sambamoorthi, PhD and Leonard M Pogach, MD, MBA will serve as the coordinators for the HSR specialization with the Department of Quantitative Methods. Drs. Sambamoorthi and Pogach are awaiting their faculty appointments in the Department of Preventive Medicine.

Dr. Sambamoorthi has over 20 years of experience in healthcare research and is both a content and methods expert in the area of health services research. Her current research interests are gender and racial/ethnic disparities and the evaluation of outcomes in individuals with multiple chronic medical and mental conditions. Her primary appointment is in the HSR&D Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management (CHeKM) in the VA NJ Healthcare System, Department of Veteran Affairs; she currently leads the health outcomes division within the Center. She is also adjunct Associate Professor at the Division of Health Care Systems and Policy, School of Public Health, UMDNJ and an associate member of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, Rutgers University.

Dr. Leonard Pogach has 15 years experience in guideline and performance measurement development and evaluation of quality of care. Dr. Pogach's current research experience includes the use of large administrative data sets to evaluate ambulatory quality of care and their impact upon prevention quality indicators among veterans with diabetes. He is the Veterans Health Administration National Program Director for Diabetes, Director of CHeKM, and Professor of Medicine, UMDNJ-NJMS.

ABOUT US

Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management
VA-NJHCS 385 Tremont Avenue (129)
East Orange, New Jersey 07018
Fax: 973-395-7111

Website: Under Construction

Usha Sambamoorthi, PhD
(General, Mental and Pharmaceutical HSR)
Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management
Phone: 732-972-6232
Alternate phone: 973-676-1000 x1512;
email: ushasambamoorthi@gmail.com

Adjunct Associate Professor, Division of Health Systems and Policy, School of Public Health, UMDNJ, NJ
Associate Member, Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Dr. Sambamoorthi is a health services researcher with doctoral level training in economics. She is an applied health services researcher with over 20 years of experience in healthcare and peer-reviewed publications in many areas including chronic physical (HIV, diabetes) and mental illness care, disease management, pharmacotherapy, pharmacoeconomics, healthcare expenditures, clinical preventive services, healthcare issues among vulnerable groups of the population such as women, racial minorities, and the elderly. Her research has been both methodological and substantive. She has been an investigative researcher on many NIH, AHRQ and VHA funded projects.

Her current research involves the interaction between mental and physical illness care among veterans. She is also committed to moving forward the research agenda on women veteran's health. Building on her work with Medicare and Medicaid claims and survey data in the non-VHA sector, Dr. Sambamoorthi in collaboration with the team members has completed manuscripts on diabetes care among women veterans. In addition to manuscripts, she has led the development of new grants to be funded by VA HSR&D funding and prepared abstracts presented in national meetings.

A significant aspect of her research has demonstrated the rich potential of administrative data, such as insurance claims, to study healthcare. Although research based on insurance claims has limitations, it has proven to be well suited to answer many of the urgent policy and service delivery questions. Many of the measures she has developed using creative and innovative approaches with Medicaid claims data have been used in peer-reviewed publications in scholarly journals.

In many analyses of health services use, a critical issue has been the development and implementation of appropriate analytic models. Therefore, she has also been involved in developing techniques to deal with a variety of statistical modeling problems in analyzing utilization and other outcomes over time. She has co-authored a number of published articles using statistically sophisticated techniques to advance methodology in health services research, such as the application of survival models, hierarchical linear models, selection models, nested logit models and robust regression techniques for longitudinal data.

Health services research needs to use multiple data sources to triangulate answers to research questions and to drive policy. Therefore, some of her current research involves use of publicly available data sources such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, and National Health Interview Survey.

Leonard M Pogach, MD, MBA.
(Quality of Healthcare)
National Program Director, Diabetes
Veterans Health Administration
Director, Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management
Phone 973-676-1000 x1693
E-mail: leonard.pogach@med.va.gov ; len.pogach@verizon.net

Assistant: Christina Croft 973-676-1000 x2091

Dr. Pogach graduated from the University of Pennsylvania (1972) with a BA in biochemistry (with distinction) and received his MD degree from Hahnemann Medical College (1976). He completed an Internal Medicine Residency at Temple University Health Sciences Center (1979), a fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism at Boston University Health Sciences Center (1981), and obtained a Masters in Business Administration from Seton Hall University (2000).

As a clinician-administrator-researcher, Dr. Pogach has devoted his career to improving diabetes care. Under his leadership as Chief, Endocrinology, East Orange VA Medical Center became the first Federal facility to achieve American Diabetes Association Recognition of its Patient Education Program (1989). As the VHA-Patient Care Services National Program Director for Diabetes since 1993, Dr. Pogach is currently the Chair of the VHA-DOD Diabetes Guideline working group, and represents the VHA on multiple Federal interagency committees, including the National Diabetes Quality Improvement Alliance Operations Committee, the National Diabetes Education Program Steering Committee, the National Quality Forum Diabetes Measure Subcommittee and the NIDDK Diabetes Mellitus Interagency Coordinating Committee. He also is the Clinical Coordinator of the VA HSRD Diabetes-Quality Enhancement Research Initiative. He has been a member of multiple American Diabetes Association committees, including the Clinical Practice Committee, the Provider Recognition Committee, and as the ADA liaison to the American Medical Podiatric Association, and is currently the Chairperson of the New Jersey State Department of Health Diabetes Coalition Quality Improvement Committee. Since 2003 he has been the director of the VA New Jersey Healthcare System Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management (CHeKM).

Dr. Pogach's current research interests include the use of large administrative data sets to evaluate quality of care and prevention quality indicators among veterans with diabetes. Recent publications from the CHeKM have evaluated new methodologies for evaluation of quality, such as the application of longitudinal modeling of facility level changes in A1c slopes, derived from individual level A1c results; evaluation of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Preventive Quality Indicators in the VHA, the nations' largest integrated healthcare system; and the application of Quality Adjusted Life Years Saved as a continuous measure by which to measure quality improvement towards �excellent A1c control�. He has also demonstrated that random sampling, compared to use of population based medical records, can inaccurately identify best and worse performing administrative healthcare units. Several recent publications on data validation and disparities were recently included in the session of � Using Administrative Data to Improve Diabetes Care: The VA Experience� presented at the 2005 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Short Course, Diabetes Public Health and Research October 17�21, 2005 , and in a national VHA WebX HSR seminar on merged VA-CMS databases.

FACULTY MEMBERS: ALPHABETICAL ORDER

Ranjana Banerjea, MA MBA (PhD Expected in May 2006)
(Data analysis)
Phone: (973) 676-1000 x 2522
Email: banerjea@njneuromed.org

Ranjana Banerjea (Ph.D expected in May, Rutgers University; MA, MBA) is a Research Analyst the Department of Veterans Affairs, New Jersey Health Care System. Ms. Banerjea's doctoral thesis is on risk behavior among adolescents. She is also teaching in the MSW program at Rutgers. She is currently working on several projects including spinal cord injury in diabetic patients, costs for diabetic conditions and others. Ms. Banerjea's prior work includes Statistical Consultancy in SAS at the Department of Mental Health & Hygiene (EODE), City of New York, Research Assistantship at the Institute of Health and Aging Studies, Rutgers University, working on healthcare issues of the elderly and AIDS/HIV prevention in the elderly using large publicly available datasets (BRFSS, NHIS). Her doctoral work includes prevention of HIV and STIs in adolescents using the Add Health data (a restricted dataset of National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). She also has worked in a doctoral summer internship at the Mathematica Policy Research, NJ. She has also presented at the APHA and Add Health conferences.

Patricia Findley, DrPH, MSW, LCSW
(Public Health, Rehabilitation, Disability)
Phone: 973-676-1000 x1606
Email: pfindley@rci.rutgers.edu

Dr. Patricia A. Findley is an Assistant Research Professor in the School of Social Work and a fellow in the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University and a Research Scholar in the Department of Veterans Affairs, New Jersey Health Care System. Prior to this appointment, she was Clinical Research Scientist/Research Assistant Professor at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago of Northwestern University's School of Medicine. She holds a Doctorate of Public Health and a Master's Degree in Social Work. Her clinical and administrative work focused on physical disabilities and her research has continue to refine that focus and expand to include chronic illness, women's health issues, and cancer survivorship. Dr. Findley has been published in several prestigious peer-reviewed journals, and has recently co-authored a book entitled The Cancer Survivor Handbook: The Essential Guide to Cancer Survivorship (In Press, Avalon Publishing, Spring 2006). She was awarded a 5-year NIH K Award that is allowing her to expand her skill mix to include economic evaluation.

Her current research involves the issues related to healthcare utilization and access for individuals with disabilities living in community-based settings, the examination of barriers related to vocational re-entry by individuals with disability both prior to and after receipt of Social Security benefits, and policy implications of the health and continued care of individuals with chronic illnesses and disabilities. She also serves as a JCAHO/CARF (rehabilitation) surveyor, and provides clinical social work services to veterans evaluated in the East Orange VA's War Related Illness and Injury Study Center.

Thomas Findley, MD, PhD.
(Rehabilitation Medicine, stroke, spinal cord injury, Rolfing, exercise and balance)
Co-Director, Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management
Phone: 973-676-1000 x 2713
E-mail: tfindley@njneuromed.org

Dr Findley is a physiatrist with a PhD in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and is experienced in large database demographic research. His 1987 paper in Medical Care �Rehabilitation Needs in the 1990s� is one of the few peer reviewed methodologies for projecting inpatient rehabilitation needs and has been widely used. Rehabilitation research often is comprised of prospective studies on small samples and single clinic studies of self-selected patients where the focus is on individual patients as they adapt in the larger social context. What this misses are systemic issues and patterns of response, for example racial and geographic disparities that may have significant impact on outcomes and service utilization. He is currently involved in health service research project on veterans with stroke and spinal cord injury.

Dr Findley completed his training in physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Minnesota, where he also completed his PhD in physical medicine and rehabilitation under the guidance of Dr. Frederic Kottke, MD PhD who was one of the founders of the field of rehabilitation. He is highly trained in both clinical interventions, principles of treatment, and research methods in rehabilitation. Dr. Findley has been thoroughly trained in exercise rehabilitation (as part of residency and PhD coursework) as well as the complementary medicine practices of Tai Chi and structural integration (Rolfing), of which he is a Certified Advanced Rolfing Practitioner. His approach to patients combines his training and interest in many areas of medicine and health care. He has a longstanding interest in combining both traditional and alternative approaches, and received training in both acupuncture and homeopathy while still in medical school.

Dr. Findley has also had a long interest in mathematical modeling. In 1966 he received the Elizabeth Fry Award for outstanding achievement in mathematics, and was initially a mathematics major at Reed College. He was chosen for the Sidney Licht Award for Excellence in Scientific Writing for his publication of his PhD dissertation in which he developed simple, clinically relevant mathematical models of energy consumption during walking for children with spina bifida. He has had 15 year collaboration with NJIT faculty Drs. Chaudhry and Bukiet which has focused on mathematical modeling of several physiological processes important to rehabilitation: gait, cardiovascular, connective tissue and most recently balance.

He also has extensive experience in the training of researchers, having mentored students at all levels from undergraduate to postdoctoral. He has authored a series of articles on rehabilitation research, and has been PI of a number of research training grants for 35 full time fellows, half of whom were clinicians (MD, DO, PT, OT).

Drew A. Helmer, MD, MS
(Ambulatory HSR)
Phone: (973) 676-1000 x 2714
E-mail: helmer@njneuromed.org

Dr. Helmer is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Medicine & Dentistry New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School and a staff physician/researcher at the VA-New Jersey Health Care System since 2001. He completed undergraduate studies in genetics and cell biology at the University of Minnesota in 1991 and a 5 year dual-degree program at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and School of Public Health in New York in 1997. Dr. Helmer moved to Houston, Texas for his internal medicine residency and a federally funded primary care research fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine.

Dr. Helmer's general research interest is improvement of ambulatory care delivery systems. He is particularly interested in organizational characteristics and provider behavior that affect ambulatory care outcomes. As clinical director of the War-Related Illness & Injury Study Center at the East Orange VA Medical Center from 2002-2004 Dr. Helmer put into practice the concepts of developing and improving a healthcare delivery system.

Dr. Helmer was awarded a Career Development Award from the Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development division to investigate the organizational and provider characteristics associated with high quality ambulatory care. With colleagues at the Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management, he will examine organizational variables from several VHA surveys and their association with the ambulatory care sensitive measure of metabolic decompensation in veterans with diabetes using merged VHA and Medicare administrative data. In a separate project, he will interview primary care providers about their communication with and care of patients with medically unexplained chronic pain and fatigue to create an assessment tool for use in a systems-based quality improvement effort.

Dr. Helmer's recent publications include �Applying diabetes-related prevention quality indicators to a national cohort of veterans with diabetes.� ( Diabetes Care 2003; 26(11)). He cares for patients in ambulatory care clinic and at the War-Related Illness & Injury Study Center at the East Orange VA Medical Center.

Miriam Maney, M S
(Rehabilitation outcomes)
Phone: (973) 676-1000 x1742
E-mail: maney@njneuromed.org

Miriam Maney is a Health Science Specialist with the VA since 2003. She comes to the VA with more than 15 years experience in Outcomes and Quality Measurement in physical rehabilitation and managed care environments. She has graduate level training in Biomechanics from Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York where she was the recipient of a full time research and training fellowship. Her research interests are in rehabilitation outcomes, functional assessment, and methods to track change in function over time in the populations disabled from stroke, spinal cord injury, amputation, head injury and problems associated with aging. She works with the team of investigators as an analyst on various projects related to diabetes, spinal cord injury and stroke and the medical problems associated with these.

She is the Administrative Officer for the HSRD Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management and acts as the liaison for the center with the VA Central office to provide updated information on grants and other metrics for the annual report. She is the project coordinator for Dr. Findley's stroke grant on Stroke Prevention, Incidence and Outcomes in Veterans with diabetes. Her interests include risk adjustment models as a tool to identify how various stroke related and other medical comorbidities predict survival time in the veteran population with stroke. She is a member of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality.

Previously, Ms. Maney also worked in a managed care environment where she was the liaison with external care management services to provide utilization information on members with end stage renal disease as the basis for ROI analysis. She also has interests in informatics having worked with various types of health care coding systems (diagnostic, procedural and revenue coding) for hospital utilization and managed care analyses.

Mangala Rajan, MBA
(Large Administrative data)
Phone: (973) 676-1000 x 2027
E-mail: rajan@njneuromed.org

Mangala Rajan graduated with an MBA from Temple University in 1992. She was the Recipient of a full tuition scholarship, was on the Dean's list and was awarded the Beta Gamma Sigma for Scholastic Achievement. During her MBA, she worked as an assistant to the chief sampling statistician at the Institute for Survey Research in Philadelphia. After graduation, she worked in a large multinational advertising and communications company (Young and Rubicam) for 8 years in various positions in the database-marketing arena. Her responsibilities included managing and analyzing large databases for marketing applications for clients such as AT&T, Miller Brewing, Sony Electronics, etc.

Ms. Rajan moved to Health Services Research in 2000 to work with Dr. Pogach at the VHA in NJ. Her extensive experience working with large databases gave her the tools required to consolidate and analyze data from a variety of sources within the VA and from CMS (Medicare). She has been working at the Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management since its foundation. She is very familiar with statistical packages such as SAS, SPSS and Stata. Her current responsibilities include working with investigators to determine their analytic needs and providing analytic support for grant, abstract and manuscript submissions. She manages a team of analysts and provides training to analytic staff. She is a co-author on several publications.

Yujing Shen, PhD
(Financing of health services)
Rutgers University
Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research
30 College Avenue
New Brunswick, NJ 08903
Phone: (973) 676-1000 x2744
Email: yshen@ifh.rutgers.edu

Dr. Yujing Shen is an Assistant Research Professor at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University and a Health Economist at the Department of Veterans Affairs, New Jersey Health Care System. Previously, she held a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor of Health Services with the Boston University School of Public Health and a Health Economist with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Her research has mostly focused on risk adjustment, cost and cost-effectiveness analyses, and consumer/provider behavior in healthcare market and VA care. Dr. Shen's work has been published in several prestigious peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Health Economics, Health Economics, Health Services Research, Medical Care, and Medical Care Research and Review. Shen, Yujing (2003), �Selection Incentives in a Performance-Based Contracting System,� Health Services Research 38(2) was selected as one of the top fifty articles in Emerald Management Reviews for 2003.

Anjali Tiwari, MD, MS
(Data management)
Phone: (973) 676-1000 x3376
E-mail: tiwari@njneuromed.org

Dr. Anjali Tiwari is working as Coordinator Data systems at New Jersey Health Care system-East Orange VA Medical Center, and has an affiliation with neuroscience department at University of Medicine and Dentistry (UMDNJ)-New Jersey Medical School.

Dr. Tiwari received her MD degree from Raipur Medical College, India (2002), and obtained a Masters in Information systems specializing in Bioinformatics from New Jersey Institute of Technology (2004). She has been working with the Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management since 2003. She is involved in projects related to diabetes care and care for people having chronic kidney disease. She has a major role in an ongoing grant that closely examines people with chronic kidney disease, their quality of care, care patterns and association between general and specialist care.

She has a major role in managing and processing the large databases. Large databases that she manages include National VA and Medicare inpatient and outpatient databases. She provides information about data availability and research feasibility to the research team. She participates in clinical and pharmaceutical research projects for various diseases, quality of healthcare and risk factor analysis. She is involved in documentation for research, grant proposals and papers for publication. She performs various statistical analysis models, correlation, regression and parametric and nonparametric analysis.

Her work involves extensive use of SAS, SPSS, Excel and SQL. Her data work involves defining cohort, data cleaning and refining, univariate and multivariate analysis of data, developing statistical models, performing longitudinal and cross sectional studies using administrative databases.

Chin-Lin Tseng, DrPH
(Bio-statistics)
Phone: 973-676-1000 x2028
E-mail: Tseng@njneuromed.org

Dr. Chin-Lin Tseng is a Health Science Specialist at New Jersey Healthcare system-East Orange VA Medical Center, and an Assistant Professor at University of Medicine and Dentistry (UMDNJ)-New Jersey Medical School. Dr. Tseng received her Doctor of Public Health with double majors of Sociomedical Sciences and Biostatistics at Columbia University in 2001. She received her bachelor and master degree from National Taiwan University. She joined the research teams at East Orange VA Hospital in 2002. Since then, she has been working with the Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management and War Related Illness and Injury Study Center on various projects. These projects include studies of diabetes care, quality of care, risk adjustment, and risk factors associated with diabetes related complications using large administrative and survey datasets, and studies of medically unexplained illnesses using patient interview and clinical examination data. She has a major role in an ongoing grant that examines association between ambulatory care (general and specialist care) and diabetes related preventable hospitalization diseases among veterans with diabetes; her focus is on the relationship between foot care and amputation.

Dr. Tseng is also the principal investigator of a recently funded VA health service grant that proposes to evaluate amputation related trends, utilization and outcomes among veterans with diabetes. She also has a major role as a Biostatistician in a recently funded grant that proposed to study renal diseases and related health outcomes and quality of care. Her research interests also include gender and health and longitudinal data analyses. She has worked with her colleagues to utilize combined VA and Medicare data to more accurately capture totality of VHA patient information. Her publication as the lead author include seasonal variation of HbA1c values, evaluation of total amputation using a administrative data-derived risk adjustment model, impacts of Medicare data on estimates of the amputation, its associated risk factors, and evaluation of footcare programs, gender comparisons on diabetes care, and gender and CFS.

Wenhui Wei, PhD
(Long term care, Methods)
Phone: 908-243-2405
E-mail: weiwenhui@gmail.com

Wenhui Wei is a Health Service Research Specialist (WOC) at New Jersey Healthcare system-East Orange VA Medical Center, and also a full-time employee at sanofi-aventis as Health Outcomes Manager in Metabolism . Dr. Wei received his Doctor degree in Economics in 2004 and also a MS degree in Statistics in 2002 from Rutgers University. Previously, he was a Research Assistant Professor at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University. He had been an investigative researcher on NIH and NIMH funded projects. He has rich experience working with large administrative/survey datasets and his research interests cover chronic illness including mental illness and diabetes care among vulnerable populations such as elderly and Medicaid enrollees. His publication as the lead author include psychotherapy among the elderly, TBI, mental illness and associated medical expenditures in Medicaid population, and gender difference in out-of-pocket prescriptions expenditures among Medicare beneficiaries.

OTHER SUPPORT STAFF

Christina Croft, MSW (Expected in May 2006)
Phone: (973) 676 - 1000 x2091
Email: croft@njneuromed.org

Christina Croft is a Patient Services Assistant at the Department of Veterans Affairs. She graduated from Lafayette College in 2003 with a B.S. in Neuroscience and currently pursuing a MSW at Rutgers University - School of Social Work. Her interests are in mental health and substance abuse. Ms. Croft works with the group, facilitating the IRB process, and grant, conference abstracts and manuscript submissions. She is also a social work intern at the VA medical centers in East Orange and Lyons. At the East Orange VA, she provides supportive community case management for veterans with severe and persistent mental illness.  At the Lyons VA, she works in the Mental Health Clinic providing outpatient psychotherapy.

5. Specifics about activity:

Starting in Fall 2006, the division will offer the Health Services Research Specialization (subject to approval by the curriculum committee) for all MPH students in the quantitative methods track. These courses are designed to:

•   Introduce current health services research topics and applications
•   Provide the students with skills to:
•   identify, investigate and assess public health problems, healthcare quality, clinical research and public policy
•   formulate research questions of interest, identify likely hypotheses and conduct their own empirical research
•   apply proper statistical, econometric, and epidemiological methods to HSR problems of interest
•   conduct HSR with large administrative datasets
•   conduct secondary HSR with the publicly available data
•   pursue a research career in HSR

Graduates from this specialization will be prepared to assume positions in state and local health departments in data management, analysis and program evaluation. They also may assume positions in academic settings in positions such as project managers and data analysts, and in many federal agencies that require methodological and analytic skills. Students graduating with this specialization will be well equipped to work in the healthcare setting, or within a state or local health department, as well as in an international setting.

6. Publications from project:

Publications Since September 2005

1. Berlowitz DR, Ash AS, Glickman M, Friedman RH, Pogach LM, Nelson AL,Wong A. Developing A Quality Meaure For Clinical Inertia In Diabetes Care . Health Serv Res. 2005;40:1836-53.
2. Frayne SM, Halanych J, Miller DR, Lin H, Wang F, Pogach L, Sharkansky EJ, Keane T, Skinner KM, Rosen CS, Dan R. Berlowitz, MD, MPH Disparities in Diabetes Care: Impact of Mental Illness Arch Intern Med. 2005;165(22):2631-8.
3. Greenberg JD, Tiwari A, Rajan M, Miller D, Natarajan S, Pogach L Determinants of sustained uncontrolled blood pressure in a national cohort of persons with diabetes. Am J Hypertension, In press.
4. Halanych, JH, Wang F, Miller DR, Pogach LM, Lin H, Berlowitz DR, Frayne SM. Racial/Ethnic Differences in Diabetes Care for Older Veterans: Accounting for Dual Health System Use Changes Conclusions, Medical Care , In Press.
5. Haidet P, Kelly PA, Bentley S, Blatt B, Chou CL, Fortin AH, Gordon G, Gracey C, Harrell H, Hatem DS, Helmer D, Paterniti DA, Wagner D, Inui TS for the Communication, Curriculum, and Culture Study Group. Not the Same Everywhere: Patient-Centered Learning Environments at Nine Medical Schools. J Gen Intern Med 2006; In press.
6. Haidet P, Kelly PA, Chou C for the C3 (Communication, Curriculum, and Culture) Study Group. Characterizing the �patient centeredness' of hidden curricula in medical schools: Development and validation of a new measure. Academic Med 2005; 80(1):44-50.
7. Hoover D, Sambamoorthi U, Crystal S. Characteristics Of Community Dwelling Elderly Not Vaccinated for Pneumococcus in1998 and 2001 � Letter (Response to Dr. Vila) Preventive Medicine, 2006 Mar;42(3):248-9.
8. Lincoln A, Helmer D, Schneiderman A, Li M, Copeland HL, Prisco M, Wallin M, Kang H, Natelson B. The War-Related Illness and Injury Study Centers: A resource for deployment-related health concerns. Mil Med 2006; In press.
9. Johnston MV, Pogach L, Rajan M, Mitchinson A, Krein SL, Bonacker K, Reiber G. Factors Associated with Foot Self-Care among Veterans with Diabetes. JRRD (accepted)
10. Kern EO, Maney M, Miller DR, Tseng CL, Tiwari A, Rajan M, Weerts S, Aron D, Pogach L. Failure of diagnosis codes to identify patients with co-morbid chronic kidney disease in diabetes. Health Services Research , 2006; 41(2): 564-580.
11. Lucas JA, Levin CA, Lowe TJ, Robertson B, Akincigil A, Sambamoorthi U, Bilder S, Paek EK, Crystal S. The Relationship Between Organizational Factors and Resident Satisfaction With Nursing Home Care and Life, JASP, In Press.
12. Pogach L, Xie M, Shentue Y, Tseng CL, Maney M, Rajan M, Tiwari A, Kolassa J, Helmer D, Crystal S, Safford M.Diabetes Healthcare Quality Report Cards: How Accurate Are The Grades? Am J Managed Care 2005;11:797-804.
13. Pogach LM, Rajan M, Aron DM. Aligning Performance Measurement with Clinical pidemiology: Comparison of Weighted Performance Measurement and Dichotomous Thresholds for Glycemic Control in the Veterans Health Administration (in press, Diabetes Care ).
14. Sambamoorthi U, Tseng CL, Rajan M, , Tiwari A, Findley PA, Pogach L. , Initial Non-Traumatic Lower Extremity Amputations, among Veterans with Diabetes. Medical Care (accepted).
15. Sambamoorthi U, Olfson M, Wei, W, Crystal S. Diabetes and Depression Care among Medicaid Beneficiaries. Journal of the Poor and Underserved, 2006 Feb;17(1):141-61.
16. Santos S, Helmer DA, Copeland HL, Simon J. Developing a Bio-Terrorism Preparedness Campaign for Veterans: Using Focus Groups to Inform Materials Development. Health Promotion Pract 2006; In press.
17. Shen, Y. Choice of a Regular Physician and Health Care Utilization: Principal-Agent Issues for Veterans and VA care, Accepted for publication in Applied Economics .
18. Shen, Y. Ann M. Hendricks, Duozhe Li, John Gardner, Lewis Kazis VA-Medicare dual beneficiaries' enrollment in Medicare HMOs: favorable selection and access, Medical Care Research and Review. 2005; 62(4): pp. 479-495
19. Tseng C, Sambamoorthi U, Tiwari A, Rajan M, Frayne S, Findley P, Pogach L. Are there Gender Differences in Diabetes Care Among Veterans ? Journal of General Internal Medicine, In Press.
20. Thompson W, Wang H, Xie M, Kolassa J, Rajan M, Tseng CL, Zhang Q, Vardi V, Pogach L, Safford MM Assessing Quality Of Diabetes Care By Measuring Longitudinal Changes In Hemoglobin A1c In The Veterans Health Administration Health Serv Res. 2005 ;40:1818-35.
21. Wei W, Akincigil A, Crystal S, Sambamoorthi U. Gender differences in out-of-pocket prescription drug expenditures. Aging Research, In Press, March 2006.

Abstracts

1. Mitra S, Sambamoorthi U. Wage Discrimination against Men and Women with Disabilities in Rural India. Eastern Economic Association, PA, February 2006.
2. Kline A, Sambamoorthi U. Addiction treatment retention in patients with and without a co-occurring mental health disorder. Annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, December 2005.
3. Findley P, Sambamoorthi U. Characteristics of individuals with traumatic brain injury in a Medicaid waiver Annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, December 2005.
4. Sambamoorthi U, Findley P, Maney M, Pogach LM, Findley TW. Do Veterans with Spinal Cord Injury and Diabetes Have Poorer Intermediate Diabetic Outcomes? Annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, December 2005.
5. Sambamoorthi U, Boyer C, Gaboda D, Cantor J. Receipt of clinical preventive services and psychiatric symptomatology among older individuals. Annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, December 2005.
6. Shen Y, Sambamoorthi U, Rajan M, Miller D, Banerjea R, Pogach LM. Obesity and VHA cost of treating veterans with diabetes. National VA HSR&D Conference, Virginia, February 2006.
7. Tseng CL, Rajan M, Helmer D, Pogach L. Using a bootstrapping method for internal validation of multinomial logistic regression models in health outcomes research. Accepted Annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, December 2005.
8. Wei W, Sambamoorthi U. Findley P, Dental health care use and expenditures among individuals with Disabilities. Roundtable discussion at the Annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, December 2005.

7. Other related websites:

Website under construction� Will be updated soon.

8. Opportunities for students:

In addition to taking courses for HSR specialization, students will have opportunites to do their fieldwork in the area of HSR with members of the team. Doctoral and post-doctoral level students may be able to choose one of the faculty members as their mentors and work on doctoral dissertations and paper publications. Currently research projects include diabetes, women's health, chronic co-morbid conditions, performance measures, lower extremity complications, preventable hospitalizes, chronic renal disease, cerebrovascular disease, depression, spinal cord injury, obesity and cost of illness.

9. Opportunities for volunteers:

Volunteers interested in participating in activities related to this project please contact Ms. Christian Croft at croft@njneuromed.org.