Core and Affiliated Investigators
Investigators who do not have an administrative appointment with ORPRN and who partner with ORPRN faculty and staff in their research are key to ORPRN’s success. Currently ORPRN partners with investigators in two ways:
ORPRN Core Investigators are OHSU faculty or research scientists who lead research or quality improvement grants and contracts within ORPRN. ORPRN Core Investigators:
- Serve as principal investigators on proposals of interest with ORPRN
- Develop research in collaboration with ORPRN faculty and staff
- Participate in conversations to guide ORPRN research areas of focus
ORPRN Affiliated Investigators are OHSU faculty or research scientists or key personnel from other health systems or organizations who are co-investigators or serve other key functions in research or quality improvement grants and contracts within ORPRN. ORPRN Affiliated Investigators:
- Serve as co-investigators or key personnel on proposals of interest with ORPRN
- Collaborate in research development process with ORPRN faculty and staff
- May participate in conversations to guide ORPRN research areas of focus
ORPRN Core Investigators:
Annette Totten, PhD
Annette Totten, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the OHSU Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology and OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. Dr. Totten holds a PhD in Health Services Research from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, an MPA in Health Policy from the Robert Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and an MA in Modern Languages from Middlebury College. She is a health services researcher and gerontologist, and her research focuses on aging, chronic illness, shared decision making, evidence-based practice and research methodology.
David Dorr, MD
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).”
Deb Cohen, PhD
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.”
John Muench, MD
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.”
Eric Simpson, MD
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.
Seiko Izumi, PhD, RN, FPCN
Dr. Izumi is an associate professor at Oregon Health & Science University School of Nursing, and Cambia Health Foundation Sojourn Palliative Care Leadership Scholar. She is a nursing and health service researcher in the field of palliative care and gerontology. She has expertise in qualitative methodology and mixed-methods approach, and lately expanding her interest into implementation science to promote practice changes through research applications. Currently she is a Co-Investigator in a PCORI supported study (PI: Totten) comparing effectiveness of implementing advance care planning program into primary care practices, and a PI in a qualitative study exploring health equity in advance care planning funded by Hillman Foundation.
Brigit Hatch, MD, MPH
Brigit Hatch is a family physician with a dual board certification in preventive medicine. She practices actively at OHSU, primarily at the Scappoose Primary Care location. As a physician she provides wholistic care across the life cycle, with special focus in the care of women and children, and is active as teaching faculty within the Family Medicine residency at OHSU. As a researcher, Dr. Hatch examines the impact of natural policy experiments on access to care and preventive health outcomes, particularly among vulnerable populations. She also leads statewide intervention work to improve preventive care in Oregon. Outside of work, she is busy with her 3 young kids and can often be found baking treats and wielding power tools.
Patty Carney, PhD, MS
Patricia (Patty) Carney is Professor of Family Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University’s School of Medicine. She has doctoral training in public health and community medicine and educational psychology. Dr. Carney has studied the medical educational continuum, including pre-matriculation, undergraduate and graduate medical education and continuing professional development of practicing physicians for over 25 years. She has been principal investigator, co-principal investigator or co-investigator of 31 observational or interventional studies and have had continuous NIH support for more than 20 years to study cancer control, health disparities, and physician training. She has over 300 peer-reviewed research publications in these areas. She has mentored dozens of medical students, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty in the development of their research careers.
Erin Kenzie, PhD, MSc
Erin officially joined ORPRN in 2020 after providing assistance to the ANTECEDENT project. She is a systems scientist with a background in the behavioral and social sciences. She has worked in various roles in research and the nonprofit sector, including several years doing homeless prevention and conflict mediation in rural Colorado.
Currently a doctoral candidate in Systems Science at Portland State University, Erin is studying how to use systems mapping to aid decision-making for health and sustainability. She also holds an M.Sc. in Sustainability Science from Lund University in Sweden and B.S. degrees in Psychology and Philosophy from Western Michigan University.
She loves being involved in research design and finding innovative ways to collect and analyze data, all with the goal of improving health for the people of Oregon. When she is not working or studying, Erin enjoys spending time with her husband and two daughters, cooking, traveling, and gardening.