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
-
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
-
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
Tuzzio L, O'Meara ES, Holden E, Parchman ML, Ralston JD, Powell JA, Baldwin LM. Barriers to implementing cardiovascular risk calculation in primary care: alignment with the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research. Am J Prev Med. 2021 Feb;60(2):250-257. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2020.07.027. Epub 2020 Dec 3. PubMed
Tuzzio L, Berry AL, Gleason K, Barrow J, Bayliss EA, Gray MF, Delate T, Bermet Z, Uratsu C, Grant RW, Ralston JD. Aligning care with the personal values of patients with complex care needs. Health Serv Res. 2021 Aug 6. doi: 10.1111/1475-6773.13862. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Tuzzio L, Meyers CM, Dember LM, Grudzen CR, Melnick ER, Staman KL, Huang SS, Richards J, DeBar L, Vazquez MA, Green BB, Coronado GD, Jarvik JG, Braciszewski J, Ho M, Wells BL, James K, Toto R, D'Onofrio G, Volandes A, Kuklinski MR, Catalano RF, Sterling SA, Morse EF, Curtis L, Larson EB. Accounting for quality improvement during the conduct of embedded pragmatic clinical trials within healthcare systems: NIH collaboratory case studies. Healthc (Amst). 2021 Jun;8 Suppl 1:100432. doi: 10.1016/j.hjdsi.2020.100432. Epub 2021 Jun 23. PubMed
Arterburn DE, Toh S, Williams N, Anau J, Courcoulas A, Tavakkoli A, Stilwell D, Tuzzio L, Lewis CC, Wilcox MN, McTigue KM. Translating stakeholder-driven comparative effectiveness research into practice: the PCORnet Bariatric Study. J Comp Eff Res. 2020 Oct 1. doi: 10.2217/cer-2020-0156. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Tuzzio L, Hanson LR, Reuben DB, Baier RR, Gurwitz JH, Bayliss EA, Williamson J, Fraser JR, Sherman SJ, Larson EB. Transforming dementia care through pragmatic clinical trials embedded in learning healthcare systems. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2020;68 Suppl 2:S43-S48. doi: 10.1111/jgs.16629. PubMed
Crabtree BF, Howard J, Miller WL, Cromp D, Hsu C, Coleman K, Austin B, Flinter M, Tuzzio L, Wagner EH. Leading innovative practice: leadership attributes in LEAP practices. Milbank Q. 2020 May 13. doi: 10.1111/1468-0009.12456. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Pisu M, Banegas MP, Liang MI, Tuzzio L, Henrikson NB. How, when, and with whom should cost of care conversations occur? preferences of two distinct cancer survivor groups. JCO Oncol Pract. 2020 May 7:JOP1900726. doi: 10.1200/JOP.19.00726. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Parchman ML, Anderson ML, Dorr DA, Fagnan LJ, O’Meara ES, Tuzzio L, Penfold RB, Cook AJ, Hummel J, Conway C, Cholan R, Baldwin LM. A randomized trial of external practice support to improve cardiovascular risk factors in primary care. Ann Fam Med. 2019 Aug 12;17(Suppl 1):S40-S49. doi: 10.1370/afm.2407. PubMed
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.
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.