KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Sharon Straus, MD, MSc, FRCPC, HBSc

Sharon E. Straus is a geriatrician and clinical epidemiologist who trained at the University of Toronto and the University of Oxford.  She is the Director of the Knowledge Translation Program and Interim Physician-in-Chief, St. Michael’s Hospital; Director, Division of Geriatric Medicine, University of Toronto; Vice Chair, and Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto.  She holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Translation and Quality of Care and has authored more than 400 publications and 3 textbooks in evidence-based medicine, knowledge translation and mentorship.  She is in the top 1% of highly cited clinical researchers as per Web of Science. She holds more than $57 million in peer reviewed research grants as a principal investigator.  She has received national awards for mentorship, research, and education.

Jim Dearing, PhD

Jim Dearing (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is Brandt Endowed Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Communication at Michigan State University.  Dearing studies the diffusion of innovations, including the adoption and implementation of new evidence-based practices, programs, technologies and policies.  His research and teaching spans dissemination science, implementation science, program sustainability, and the psychological and sociological basis of the diffusion process.  He works with research and practice improvement teams in environmental remediation, nursing care, water conservation, injury and fatality prevention, public health, and healthcare.  He has been PI for research grants from NSF, EPA, NCI, AHQR, and private foundations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Wallace Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Meg Wise, MLS, PhD

Meg Wise is a qualitative and mixed-method researcher at the UW’s Sonderegger Research Center and an affiliate of the Center for Patient Partnerships. Her research has focused on how patients experience illness and the development, evaluation and implementation of self-care, narrative and decision support interventions.

Her National Cancer Institute-funded research found that a telephone/online life narrative review intervention improved a sense of peace among advanced cancer patients and protected against advancing distress seen in the control group. Narrative interventions are now implemented in healthcare settings.  Her research with the U.S. Health Experience Research Network elicits and analyzes deep interviews to develop websites portraying a patients’ experiences illness from first inklings, through treatment, to the psychosocial-spiritual. These modules are used to inform clinician education and quality improvement initiatives. 

Specific to this D&I Short Course is Wise’s two-decade collaboration with the Medical Education Institute (MEI), a 501c3 non-profit education and advocacy organization for people living with chronic kidney disease. We conducted two recorded conversation studies of nephrologists and their patients on the cusp of kidney failure. In the first, nephrologists used a generic script to deliver didactic information about dialysis options without asking about patient values—and wanted tools to ease the difficult conversation. In the second, patients completed, My Life, My Dialysis Choice (My Life), MEI’s online values-based decision aid before their appointment and shared the pictorial summary of patient values and dialysis preferences with their nephrologist. In these conversations, nephrologists acknowledged patients’ values, tailored dialysis information accordingly, and reported receiving patients’ My Life summary eased the conversation.  Fresenius is now implementing My Life across its U.S. facilities. Pilot studies to integrate My Life into UW Health’s Options Education class and in-patient dialysis unit are underway.

David Gustafson, PhD

Research Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Director of the National Cancer Institute designated Center of Excellence in Cancer Communications
Director of the University of Wisconsin−Madison’s Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies, which includes the national program office for the Network for Improvement of Addiction Treatment, and Center of Excellence on Active Aging Research (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality).

Dave directs the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies, which includes the national program office for the Network for Improvement of Addiction Treatment, and Center of Excellence on Active Aging Research (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality). His research interests focuses on developing systems engineering tools to support sustainable individual and organizational improvement. His work in organizational change looks to develop and evaluate strategies for promoting and sustaining improvement in behavioral health care and involves more than 400 treatment agencies in 36 states. His individual change research focuses on developing and evaluating eHealth systems using, as the test vehicle, CHESS, a computer system delivered through mobile technology to help people facing serious health problems with a particular focus on cancer. His randomized trials of CHESS help to provide understanding on the acceptance, use, and impact of eHealth on quality of life, behavior change, and health services utilization.

He has published over 300 reviewed publications, including 10 books. Dave is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and Fellow of the Association for Health Services Research, the American Medical Informatics Association, the WK Kellogg Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, which he co-founded and was board vice-chair. He co-chaired the federal Science Panel on Interactive Communications in Health and serves on NIH's Dissemination and Implementation in Health Study Section.

Heidi Brown, MD

Assistant Professor

Dr. Heidi Brown, MD, MAS, FACOG, FPMRS, is an Assistant Professor of Urogynecology in the Division of Benign Gynecology and Gynecologic Subspecialties. She is board-certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery. Dr. Brown graduated magna cum laude from Brown University's Program in Liberal Medical Education with a bachelor’s degree in Community Health and obtained her medical degree from Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University in 2006. She completed a year-long fellowship in Applied Epidemiology with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia in 2005. Dr. Brown completed her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Magee-Women's Hospital. She then completed a fellowship in Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery and a Masters of Advanced Studies in Clinical Research at the University of California - San Diego. She joined the faculty at UW-Madison in August, 2013 and holds appointments in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Department of Urology.

Dr. Brown's primary research focus is on improving access to effective treatments for pelvic floor disorders. She is a Health Innovation Program investigator and recipient of a 2016 Wisconsin Partnership Program New Investigator Program Grant to study a community-based program that promotes self-management of bladder and bowel incontinence, in collaboration with the Wisconsin Institute for Health Aging's Community Academic Aging Research Network (CAARN).

Dr. Brown mentors residents, medical students, and undergraduate students, and is the recipient of numerous teaching and research awards. She serves on committees for the American Urogynecologic Society and the International Urogynecological Association and is a member of the Editorial Board of Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery.

Dr. Brown sees patients in the Women's Pelvic Wellness Program and volunteers at Share the Health.

PLANNING COMMITTEE 

POLICY ON DISCLOSURE

It is the policy of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Interprofessional Continuing Education Partnership, that the faculty, authors, planners, and other persons who may influence content of this CE activity disclose all relevant financial relationships with commercial interests in order to allow CE staff to identify and resolve any potential conflicts of interest. Faculty must also disclose any planned discussion of unlabeled/unapproved uses of drugs or devices during their presentation(s). Detailed disclosures will be made in the activity materials.

Disclosures will be available prior to the start of the conference.

*The ACCME, ACPE, and ANCC defines a commercial interest as any entity producing, marketing, re‐selling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on, patients. The ACCME, ACPE, and ANCC does not consider providers of clinical service directly to patients to be commercial interests.

The University of Wisconsin provides equal opportunities in employment and programming, including Title IX requirements. The University of Wisconsin fully complies with the legal requirements of the ADA and the rules and regulations thereof. If any participant in this educational activity is in need of accommodations, please contact info@icep.wisc.edu.