Nurse-led behavioral management of diabetes and hypertension in community practices: a randomized trial.

My general interests are in the improve quality of care for chronic illness, using diabetes as a model. While I have performed research on screening for, diagnosis of, and clinical severity of unrecognized diabetes in patient care settings, my current line of work is in using health systems interventions to prevent cardiovascular disease, and to improve outcomes from comorbid diabetes and hypertension.

Rowena J. Dolor, MD, MHS did her medical training and internal medicine residency at Duke University Medical Center. She completed the Ambulatory Care/Health Services Research fellowship at the Durham VA Medical Center in 1996 and obtained her Masters in Health Sciences degree in Biometry (renamed MHS in Clinical Research) from the Duke University School of Medicine in 1998. Dr. Dolor was a staff physician in the Ambulatory Care Service at the Durham VA Medical Center and Research Associate at the Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care at the Durham VAMC from 1995-2012.  She is currently an investigator of several federally-funded projects conducted in the community-based setting. Dr. Dolor served as a member of the AHRQ PBRN Resource Center Steering Committee and co-chaired the NAPCRG PBRN conference from 2012-2016.

Since 1996, Dr. Dolor has been the director of the Primary Care Research Consortium (PCRC), a network of primary care practices in the Duke University Health System and outlying communities. The PCRC has participated in over 100 industry- and investigator-initiated studies on hypertension, hyperlipidemia, asthma, otitis, obesity, diabetes, depression, anticoagulation, and vaccines. In 2002, the Duke PCRC received grant funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) for Primary Care Practice-based Research Networks (PBRNs). The focus of her research pertains to primary care clinical and outcomes research. She has helped lead a number of comparative effectiveness studies and large, pragmatic trials in the primary care setting.   In addition, Dr. Dolor has led or co-led networks in otolaryngology and integrative medicine.

Dr. Dolor has contributed to the development and methodology of Practice-based Research Networks (PBRNs). She has served as a co-investigator on three online resources to help researchers conduct multi-center research in the primary care practice-based setting – (1) A toolkit for building and sustaining health research partnership with practices and communities, http://www.researchtoolkit.org/index.php (2) Toolkit for Developing and Conducting Multi-site Clinical Trials in Practice Based Research Networks, http://www.dartnet.info/ClinicalTrialsPBRNToolkit.htm ; and (3) PBRN Research Good Practices (PRGP), http://www.napcrg.org/PBRNResearchGoodPractice

From July 2009-June 2012, she served as the Associate Director for the Duke EPC. She worked closely with the Director, Gillian Sanders PhD, in overseeing the day-to-day functioning of EPC projects and supervising EPC personnel.  The Duke EPC was awarded a contract entitled “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: Comprehensive EPC Comparative Effectiveness Reviews for Effective Health Care” to serve within a core group of EPCs to focus on a comprehensive approach to comparative effectiveness review (CER) and evidence synthesis. The Duke EPC area of concentration was cardiovascular and pulmonary disorders.

She previously served as the principal investigator for the systematic literature review for the AHA Scientific Statement: Evidence-based guidelines for cardiovascular disease prevention in women published in 2004 and updated in 2007. She was the PI of four CER projects on “Noninvasive Technologies for the Diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease in Women” and “Treatment Strategies for Women with CAD”, “PAD”, and “UA/NSTEMI” as well as upcoming CER topics on pulmonary arterial hypertension, peripheral artery disease and unstable angina/non-ST elevation myocardial infarction. 

Within the Duke Clinical and Translational Institute (CTSI), Dr. Dolor directs the collaboration with CTSI researchers on community-based PBRN projects. From 2011- 2014, she was co-chair of the CTSA PBRN Collaboration Workgroup, and a member of the Community Engagement Key Function Committee, the CTSA Strategic Goal 4 Combined Networking Group committee, and the CTSA Comparative Effectiveness Research Key Function Committee (CER KFC). Since September 2016, she serves as a Co-chair of the Dissemination, Implementation and Knowledge Transfer Workgroup within the Collaboration Engagement Domain Task Force.

In the fall of 2014, Dr. Dolor joined Vanderbilt part-time as a Consultant/Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine within the Division of General Internal Medicine. Her role is to assist in the formation of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Clinical Research Network, a PBRN in the mid-Tennessee region.  In addition, she is a co-investigator on the Mid-South Clinical Data Research Network, a PCORnet awardee, to build the partnership with the community practices for comparative effectiveness studies that will utilize the electronic health records/information system infrastructure of the CDRN. 

diabetes, diabetes prevention, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, pregnancy and diabetes

Dr. Bradi Granger is a Research Professor at Duke University School of Nursing, Director of the Duke Heart Center Nursing Research Program, and adjunct faculty at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She is also a core faculty at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy. Dr. Granger received her doctorate in nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, her MSN from Duke University, and her BSN from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Dr. Granger has extensive clinical experience in cardiovascular nursing, and her clinical work as a Clinical Nurse Specialist has been dedicated to overcoming barriers to the use and conduct of research in the service setting through the development of pragmatic tools that change the way nurses learn about, apply, and conduct nursing science. She has developed an innovative model for clinical inquiry and research in the hospital setting, which has been adopted in clinical settings across the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Granger is an active member of the Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science, the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, the American Heart Association, and the European Society for Patient Adherence, Compliance, and Persistence. 

Dr. Bosworth is a health services researcher and Deputy Director of the Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation (ADAPT)  at the Durham VA Medical Center. He is also Vice Chair of Education and Professor of Population Health Sciences. He is also a Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry, and Nursing at Duke University Medical Center and Adjunct Professor in Health Policy and Administration at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests comprise three overarching areas of research: 1) clinical research that provides knowledge for improving patients’ treatment adherence and self-management in chronic care; 2) translation research to improve access to quality of care; and 3) eliminate health care disparities. 

Dr. Bosworth is the recipient of an American Heart Association established investigator award, the 2013 VA Undersecretary Award for Outstanding Achievement in Health Services Research (The annual award is the highest honor for VA health services researchers), and a VA Senior Career Scientist Award. In terms of self-management, Dr. Bosworth has expertise developing interventions to improve health behaviors related to hypertension, coronary artery disease, and depression, and has been developing and implementing tailored patient interventions to reduce the burden of other chronic diseases. These trials focus on motivating individuals to initiate health behaviors and sustaining them long term and use members of the healthcare team, particularly pharmacists and nurses. He has been the Principal Investigator of over 30 trials resulting in over 400 peer reviewed publications and four books. This work has been or is being implemented in multiple arenas including Medicaid of North Carolina, private payers, The United Kingdom National Health System Direct, Kaiser Health care system, and the Veterans Affairs.

Areas of Expertise: Health Behavior, Health Services Research, Implementation Science, Health Measurement, and Health Policy