Clarissa Hsu, PhD
“I want to empower individuals and communities by ensuring they have the information and support from health care systems to make decisions and take action to improve their health and well-being. This means directly involving them in the design and testing of health care processes and interventions.”
Clarissa Hsu, PhD
Associate Investigator, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute
Clarissa.W.Hsu@kp.org
206-287-4276
Biography
Medical anthropologist Clarissa Hsu, PhD, has been doing Kaiser Permanente research since 2001, and became an official member of the faculty in 2011. She conducts research using a holistic approach that unites the cultural, social, and political factors that shape health and health care. Dr. Hsu was one of the first researchers to receive funding from the national Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), which supports studies on issues that are a high priority for patients, caregivers, and clinicians. PCORI-funded research follows an innovative model, including patient input at all steps in the research process. Dr. Hsu and her team christened her PCORI project LINCC: Learning to Integrate Neighborhoods and Clinical Care.
The LINCC project designed, piloted, and evaluated a new primary care role: connecting patients to community resources. This new community resource specialist role was spread throughout Kaiser Permanente Washington, with a robust evaluation and implementation support co-led by Dr. Hsu through KPWHRI’s Center for Accelerating Care Transformation. LINCC also resulted in the creation of valuable health care resources, including an article on having patients as co-investigators, as well as a guide and set of care-design templates for engaging a cohort of patients in co-designing care.
Dr. Hsu is also at the forefront of other prevalent health issues, working to document, design, evaluate, and disseminate new approaches and best practices. She seeks to help chronic pain patients taper off and find alternatives to opioids. She also works to improve how care delivery systems interact with patients and family members around sensitive and complex topics such as dementia diagnoses, use of antipsychotics in youth, blood pressure diagnosis and control, cannabis use, and childhood vaccinations.
Dr. Hsu is an affiliate professor at the University of Washington School of Public Health.
Research interests and experience
-
Clinical Quality Improvement
Primary care; ambulatory care; preventive medicine; health care design and workforce issues; addressing social determinants of health -
Patient-Centered Outcomes Research/Patient-Centered Care
Patient engagement and partnership; shared decision making -
Chronic Pain
Using safe and effective methods to treat pain, supporting patients to minimize opioid use, cannabis use, communication about pain -
Addressing Social Risks in Clinical Settings
Screening and providing support for patients with social needs -
Complementary & Integrative Health
Patient experiences with complementary and alternative medicine
-
Evaluation Science and Implementation and Dissemination Science
Qualitative and mixed-methods approaches
-
Healthy Communities
Clinic-community linkages; preventive medicine; addressing social determinants of health
-
Addictions
Prevention and treatment
-
Social Determinants of Health
-
Chronic Illness Management
-
Vaccines & Infectious Diseases
Recent publications
Arterburn DE, Wellman R, Courcoulas A, Anau J, Hsu C, Tavakkoli A, Fischer GS, Ahmed B, Eavey J, Luce C, Williams N, Stilwell D, Paul K, Daigle CR, Elwyn G, McTigue KM Enhancing Shared Decision-Making in Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery: A Multi-System Implementation and Evaluation 2025 Dec;11(6):e70091. doi: 10.1002/osp4.70091. Epub 2025-12-05. PubMed
Hsu C, Glass D, Cruz S, Corage Baden A, Senturia K Beyond saturation: A qualitative framework for operationalizing respondent sampling (Q-FORS) for data adequacy 2025 Nov 12;390:118781. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118781. Epub 2025-11-12. PubMed
Lewis CC, Pullmann MD, Hsu C, Norris C, Mogk J, Pardee R, Walsh-Bailey C, Westbrook E, Lee A, Ridpath J, DeWitt C, Mahmud A, Coleman K, Lozano P Optimizing the community resource specialist to address social needs in primary care: results from a pragmatic quality improvement evaluation 2025 Oct 31;26(1):330. doi: 10.1186/s12875-025-02922-x. Epub 2025-10-31. PubMed
Hansell LD, Hsu CW, Mogk JM, Paz SR, Moore DD, Macias MM, Bhakta BB, Crawford CL, Ellis D, Lopez C, Jackson T, Graves R, Corralejo V, Gray MF, Young DR, Drewnowski A, Lewis KH, Murali SB, Coleman KJ Experiences and Perspectives of Racially Diverse Patients 5 Years Post-Bariatric Surgery: Qualitative Findings from the BELONG II Study 2025 Oct 16 doi: 10.1007/s40615-025-02635-y. Epub 2025-10-16. PubMed
Green BB, Hansell LD, Hsu CW, Jones T, Luce C, Ralston JD, Munson SA, Davis B, Wright T, Anderson ML Evaluation of an Email Blood Pressure Measurement Outreach Program 2025 Oct 15 doi: 10.1093/ajh/hpaf206. Epub 2025-10-15. PubMed
Hansell LD, Hsu CW, Munson SA, Margolis KL, Thompson MJ, Ehrlich KJ, Hall YN, Anderson ML, Evers SC, Marcus-Smith MS, McClure JB, Green BB Patient experiences with blood pressure measurement methods for hypertension diagnosis: Qualitative findings from the BP-CHECK study 2024 Oct 14;37(11):868-875. doi: 10.1093/ajh/hpae088. Epub 2024-07-12. PubMed
Williamson BD, Coley RY, Hsu C, McCracken CE, Cook AJ Considerations for Subgroup Analyses in Cluster-Randomized Trials Based on Aggregated Individual-Level Predictors 2024 Jul;25(Suppl 3):421-432. doi: 10.1007/s11121-023-01606-1. Epub 2023-10-28. PubMed
Hsu C, Mogk J, Hansell L, Glass JE, Allen C. Rapid Group Analysis Process (Rap-GAP): A novel approach to expedite qualitative health research data analysis. Int J Qual Methods. 2024 May 24. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069241256275. PubMed
Ralston JD, Anderson M, Ng J, Bashir A, Ehrlich K, Burns-Hunt D, Cotton M, Hansell L, Hsu C, Hunt H, Karter AJ, Levy SM, Ludman E, Madziwa L, Omura EM, Rogers K, Sevey B, Shaw JAM, Shortreed SM, Singh U, Speight J, Sweeny A, Tschernisch K, Sergei Tschernisch S, Yarborough L Preventing severe hypoglycemia in adults with type 2 diabetes (PHT2): Design, delivery and evaluation framework for a randomized controlled trial 2024 Apr;139:107456. doi: 10.1016/j.cct.2024.107456. Epub 2024-01-20. PubMed
Hall YN, Anderson ML, McClure JB, Ehrlich K, Hansell LD, Hsu CW, Margolis KL, Munson SA, Thompson MJ, Green BB Relationship of Blood Pressure, Health Behaviors, and New Diagnosis and Control of Hypertension in the BP-CHECK Study 2024 Feb;17(2):e010119. doi: 10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.123.010119. Epub 2024-02-08. PubMed
ENSPIRE Codesign Playbook
Develop a codesign project and process with insights from the ENSPIRE study.
Healthy findings blog
Accelerating qualitative research with Rap-GAP
Clarissa Hsu and Jess Mogk share a new way to fast-track insights from qualitative data.
Research roundup
What's new in cannabis use research?
Use in pregnancy and screening in primary care studied by KPWHRI’s Kiel, Matson, and Lapham.
research
LINCC-ing patients with community resources
Study ends but benefits for Kaiser Permanente members continue — thanks to a new support role in the regions’ clinics, writes Dr. Clarissa Hsu.
Resources
Partnering with Patients as Equals in Co-Designing Primary Care: Examples and Tools from the LINCC Project
New findings
Overcoming undervaccination
Clarissa Hsu, PhD, asked parents why they decline or delay vaccinating their children to explore ways to overcome barriers to getting vaccinated.
Land Acknowledgment
Our Seattle offices sit on the occupied land of the Duwamish and by the shared waters of the Coast Salish people, who have been here thousands of years and remain. Learn about practicing land acknowledgment.