2020 Scholars
Jennifer Lewis, MD, MS, MPH
Assistant Professor
Dr. Lewis is a practicing thoracic medical oncologist at Vanderbilt and VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System. She is a graduate of the VA Quality Scholars Program and co-directs the VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System Lung Cancer Screening Program. Her implementation science research program focuses on developing methodologies and tools aimed at translating lung cancer early detection and prevention into clinical practice. She was awarded funding from the VA Office of Rural Health to co-lead a national evaluation of lung cancer screening programs in 14 VA medical centers participating in VA-Partnership to Increase Access to Lung Screening. This evaluation is assessing the inner setting of implementation at each VA medical center, barriers and facilitators at the patient and provider levels, as well as process adaptations in lung cancer screening over time. As a scholar in the V-STTaR K12 Program, she will conduct an in-depth exploration of provider engagement as well as develop strategies to overcome provider-level barriers.
PROGRAM ALUMNI
2018 Scholars
Leanne Boehm, PhD, RN, ACNS-BC
Assistant Professor
Dr. Boehm's research aims to eliminate delirium, oversedation, and immobilization in intensive care and maximize the quality of survivorship for patients and family members following critical illness. She has worked extensively on reducing the prevalence of ICU delirium through implementation of an interprofessional evidence-based bundle (i.e. ABCDEF bundle). Her primary research interests include exploration of interventions to improve interprofessional protocol implementation, adherence, and fidelity in the acute care setting; implementation of ICU peer support and diary programs with exploration of the associated patient, staff, and organizational outcomes; and exploration of interventions to reduce the burden of post-intensive care syndrome (PICS). She has advanced training in implementation science and quality improvement. Her current research is evaluating the feasibility of telehealth delivery for ICU Recovery Care. Dr. Boehm is an investigator with Vanderbilt's Center for Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction and Survivorship (www.icudelirium.org).
T A M. McDonald, PhD
Research Instructor
Dr. McDonald's research addresses challenges for the successful implementation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) in adults with ASD. Her research includes identifying implementation challenges with this population, developing appropriate program supports and assessments, and pilot-testing the developed program with adults with ASD.
Lyndsay A. Nelson, PhD
Research Assistant Professor
Dr. Nelson is a social psychologist with expertise in experimental and translational health psychology. Dr. Nelson received her MA in Experimental Psychology from Appalachian State University and her PhD in Social/Experimental Psychology from East Tennessee State University. Her research is grounded in self-care promotion for type 2 diabetes and technology- and community-based health interventions for underserved populations. Dr. Nelson has examined user engagement, usability, and effectiveness of several technology-delivered health interventions for diabetes, but is particularly passionate about researching and optimizing technologies which are shared across socioeconomic status and racial/ethnic groups, namely text messaging, to reduce disparities. Her recent work is focused on examining more critically how users engage with text message-delivered interventions, in order to design and implement interventions that help sustain engagement, and therefore potentiate impact. Dr. Nelson is a former postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt and is affiliated with the Center for Health Behavior and Health Education.
2019 Scholars
James Antoon, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor
Dr. Antoon received his BS in Economics from Davidson College and completed his MD and PhD in pharmacology at Tulane University School of Medicine. Since completing his pediatric residency training at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Antoon has practiced as a pediatric hospitalist at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Dr. Antoon joined the Division of General Hospital Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at VUMC in 2019 as a physician scientist. His research program on focuses on pharmacoepidemiology and medication safety in children. As a scholar in the V-STTaR K12 implementation program, he is developing clinical decision support tools to improve identification and risk assessment of drug allergies in the Children's Hospital.
Scott Lee, MD, PhD, MPA, MPhil
Assistant Professor
Dr. Lee joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University as an Assistant Professor of Medicine in 2018. His research focuses on using insights from behavioral economics to improve health behavior and health care delivery in the United States and in developing countries. He is trained as an internist, having graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and as a behavioral economist, having obtained a PhD in health policy and management from Harvard Business School. Recent research projects include several field-based RCTs carried out in conjunction with the Governments of India and Zambia that evaluate the impact of various non-financial incentives, such as career opportunities, performance feedback, and self-tracking, on the performance of frontline health workers. Going forward, he hopes to build upon his work on provider-side incentives by designing and evaluating patient-side behavioral incentives, with a focus on cardiometabolic disease.