ORPRN names four Core Investigators

ORPRN Core Investigators are non-ORPRN OHSU faculty who partner with ORPRN by serving as principal investigators on projects within ORPRN and commit to ongoing development of research collaborations with ORPRN. Being named an ORPRN Core Investigator is a public acknowledgement of an investigator’s interest in and experience with practice-based research, and their commitment to ORPRN’s mission to improve health outcomes and equity for all Oregonians.

ORPRN is pleased to offer the Core Investigator distinction to the following OHSU faculty:

Portrait photo of David Dorr

David Dorr, MD, is a Professor and Vice-Chair of Clinical Informatics within the Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology (DMICE) and Chief Research Information Officer for OHSU. He attended medical school at Washington University and did his residency at OHSU. His work focuses on the needs of vulnerable communities with a sociotechnical and data-driven view; his work with ORPRN has focused on nurse care management, Healthy Hearts Northwest, the integrated care coordination information system, the advance care planning Meta-LARC trial, and the Comprehensive Primary Care (and Plus) projects over the last 10 years. He notes that, “We’ve learned a great deal together about how change can be implemented in ways that improve the quadruple aim (better, more efficient care that improves outcomes for patients and care teams).”

John Muench

John Muench, MD, is a Professor in the Department of Family Medicine. He attended medical school at Wayne State and did his residency at West Suburban Hospital. He has been involved in research for around the same time as ORPRN has existed. LJ Fagnan and Bruce Goldberg were his early research mentors. He is most interested in the intersection of primary care and emotional/behavioral healthcare and most of his grant funding addresses forms of addiction prevention and treatment in primary care. He has been a strong advocate of the ORPRN mission since its founding in the early 2000s. He comments, “I believe that we need more research instigated and conducted at the grassroots level, along the “blue highways.” I’ve been long impressed by the relationships ORPRN maintains with clinics, large and small, and with individual family physicians who truly walk the walk of asking hard questions about clinical care.”

Portrait photo of Deb Cohen

Deb Cohen, PhD, is a Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Family Medicine. She received her PhD from Rutgers University. She is a qualitative and mixed methodologist who has a deep passion for primary care. Her research has focused on primary care practice transformation dissemination and implementation, health information technology, comprehensive, whole person primary care and clinician-patient communication. She has served as a principal investigator on a collaborative grant with ORPRN called INTEGRATE-D and co-leads the ACTION IV master contract with ORPRN. She believes, “The ORPRN Core Investigator designation [formalizes] the collaboration that we already have established.”

Portrait photo of Eric Simpson

Eric Simpson, MD, is a Professor of Dermatology at OHSU. He attended the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and did his residency at OHSU. His work focuses on atopic dermatitis (eczema), a common disease that presents most commonly in the primary care setting. His research aims to find cost-effective methods for preventing eczema and allergies, a goal that resonates with many primary care practitioners and community members in the ORPRN network. He is interested in developing prevention strategies that are feasible to implement in the real-world setting, making ORPRN an excellent fit for a pragmatic trial approach to disease prevention. He believes the quality of the research infrastructure, the clinician investigators, and breadth of the network is unmatched in Oregon and working with ORPRN allowed him to create a team of outstanding study managers, coordinators, and statisticians with an excellent scientific and funding track record, enabling his team to submit several successful NIH proposals.