Kristin R. Archer, Ph.D

Kristin R. Archer, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. She is also the director of Vanderbilt’s Center for Musculoskeletal Research. Her expertise is in the assessment and management of psychosocial risk factors in patients with musculoskeletal conditions. She has developed various behavioral interventions that merge psychological strategies with more traditional physical therapy techniques and tested these innovative programs through multi-center pragmatic trials. Research interests also include the development and validation of tools to predict patient-centered outcomes and assess chronic pain and disability. Archer has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DoD) and Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), as well as various foundations. She was a research fellow of the NIH and a visiting scientist at the University of Pittsburgh. Archer is the author of more than 130 peer reviewed papers and has received awards from the North American Spine Society and the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. She holds a doctoral degree in health policy and management from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a master’s and doctorate in physical therapy from the University of Colorado. She joined the Osher team as research director in September of 2019.