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
Hebert PL, Sisk JE, Wang JJ, Tuzzio L, Casabianca JM, Chassin MR, Horowitz C, McLaughlin MA. Cost-effectiveness of nurse-led disease management for heart failure in an ethnically diverse urban community. Ann Intern Med. 2008;149(8):540-8. PubMed
Aiello Bowles EJ, Tuzzio L, Wiese CJ, Kirlin B, Greene SM, Clauser SB, Wagner EH. Understanding high-quality cancer care: a summary of expert perspectives. Cancer. 2008;112(4):934-42. Epub 2008 Jan 7. PubMed
Sisk JE, Horowitz CR, Wang JJ, McLaughlin MA, Hebert PL, Tuzzio L. The success of recruiting minorities, women, and elderly into a randomized controlled effectiveness trial. Mt Sinai J Med. 2008;75(1):37-43. PubMed
Aiello EJ, Buist DS, Wagner EH, Tuzzio L, Greene SM, Lamerato LE, Field TS, Herrinton LJ, Haque R, Hart G, Bischoff KJ, Geiger AM. Diffusion of aromatase inhibitors for breast cancer therapy between 1996 and 2003 in the cancer research network. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2008;107(3):397-403. Epub 2007 Mar 28. PubMed
Hebert P, Tuzzio L, Chassin M, Bramley D. Bramley et al. respond. Am J Public Health.
Bramley D, Hebert P, Tuzzio L, Chassin M. Indigenous disparities in health: a cross-country comparison between New Zealand and the United States. Am J Public Health. 2005 May;95(5):844-50. PubMed
Horowitz CR, Tuzzio L, Rojas M, Monteith SA, Sisk JE. How do urban African Americans and Latinos view the influence of diet on hypertension? J Health Care Poor Underserved. 2004 Nov;15(4):631-44. PubMed
Stewart AL, Gillis D, Grossman M, Pruitt L, McLellan B, Castrillo M, Tuzzio L, Ritter PL. Increasing physical activity levels of underserved seniors: diffusing a research-based program into community settings. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine. 2002; 9, (Suppl 1), 260-261.
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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