Leah Tuzzio, MPH
“I am a qualitative researcher who uses human-centered design principles to improve people’s care experience.”
Leah Tuzzio, MPH
Senior Research Associate, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute
Leah.Tuzzio@kp.org
206-287-2109
Biography
Leah Tuzzio, MPH, focuses on improving patient experience, implementing evidence into health systems, and improving the health of populations. She is collaborating with teams at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI)’s MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation and Center for Community Health and Evaluation on projects related to social determinants of health, including financial hardship in cancer care, quality improvement in primary care, patient-centered care, and community-based research.
She co-leads the National Institutes of Health Collaboratory’s Health Care Systems Interactions core, which reports on lessons learned from implementing pragmatic trials embedded in health systems. The core disseminates these lessons in the Living Textbook, in manuscripts, and through learning workshops. With Dr. Nora Henrikson, Leah studies ways to improve price transparency at the point of care and the impact of price data on behavior. With several teams at KPWHRI, she conducts qualitative research to learn about people’s values for their health and well-being, barriers and facilitators to getting preventive screening, clinicians’ ideas for implementing evidence into shared decision making, and how research affects health policy. At Kaiser Permanente Washington, she is a steering committee member of the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Equity and Access Team, also called HEAT. In addition, she co-leads the Health Care Systems Research Network (HCSRN) Patient Engagement in Research Scientific Interest Group.
Research interests and experience
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Health Services & Economics
Health promotion; social/behavioral theories; smoking cessation
Behavior Change
Health promotion; social/behavioral theories; smoking cessation
Health Services & Economics
Primary care organization and design; quality of primary care; implementation science; value-based health care; patient-centered care; team-based care
Patient-Centered Care
Patient-centered medical home
Aging & Geriatrics
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Chronic Illness Management
Collaborative approaches to transforming health care systems; design of health care systems and teams; evaluation of health care systems; measurement of change in health care systems
Preventive Medicine
Preventive care; evidence-based medicine; immunization
Healthy Communities
Clinic-community linkages; preventive medicine; addressing social determinants of health
Cancer
Social Determinants of Health
Recent publications
Brandzel S, Chang E, Tuzzio L, Campbell C, Coronado N, Bowles EJ, Bradford SC, Buist DS. Latina and Black/African American women's perspectives on cancer screening and cancer screening reminders. J Racial Ethn Health Disparities. 2016 Nov 18. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Parchman ML, Fagnan LJ, Dorr DA, Evans P, Cook AJ, Penfold RB, Hsu C, Cheadle A, Baldwin LM, Tuzzio L. Study protocol for "Healthy Hearts Northwest": a 2 x 2 randomized factorial trial to build quality improvement capacity in primary care. Implement Sci. 2016 Oct 13;11(1):138. PubMed
Henrikson NB, Lau RW, Tuzzio L, Christianson M, Phan TH, Chen E. Treatment prices at the point of care in a clinical oncology service: pilot project. J Oncol Pract. 2016 Oct;12(10):e957-e963. PubMed
Johnson K, Tuzzio L, Renz A, Baldwin LM, Parchman M. Decision-to-implement worksheet for evidence-based interventions in organizations: development and testing in the WWAMI region practice and research network. J Am Board Fam Med. 2016 Sep-Oct;29(5):553-62. doi: 10.3122/jabfm.2016.05.150327. PubMed
Madrid S, Tuzzio L, Stults C, Wright L, Napolitano G, Dillon E, Tabano H, Greene S. Sharing experiences and expertise: the Health Care Systems Research Network workshop on patient engagement in research. J Patient Cent Res Rev. 2016;3:159-66. doi: 10.17294/2330-0698.1272.
Green BB, Anderson ML, Chubak J, Baldwin LM, Tuzzio L, Catz S, Cole A, Vernon SW. Colorectal cancer screening rates increased after exposure to the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH). J Am Board Fam Med. 2016;29(2):191-200. doi: 10.3122/jabfm.2016.02.150290. PubMed
Ludman EJ, McCorkle R, Bowles EA, Rutter CM, Chubak J, Tuzzio L, Jones S, Reid RJ, Penfold R, Wagner EH. Do depressed newly diagnosed cancer patients differentially benefit from nurse navigation? Gen Hosp Psychiatry. 2015 Feb 28. pii: S0163-8343(15)00038-9. doi: 10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2015.02.008 [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Tuzzio L, Richards JE, Ludman EJ, Hsu C. Building infrastructure to recruit, hire and engage patient partners in research collaborations. J Patient-Centered Res Rev. 2015;2:136-137.
Co-designing with patients
Patient collaboration sparks care innovations
By partnering with patients, KPWHRI researchers developed 2 new interventions to boost lung cancer screening.
Research
CVD risk calculation: Can smaller clinics break through?
KPWHRI researchers uncover obstacles faced by smaller practices when adding CVD risk calculators into primary care.
news
What defines outstanding primary care leadership?
The MacColl Center’s LEAP project identifies 11 features of effective leadership at primary care practices.
health services & economics
Community health workers can help make the difference for patients
Leah Tuzzio, MPH, and colleagues describe an underutilized role that can help primary care become truly patient-centered.
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