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NIH grant 2IK6RD003131-08: HSR Research Career Scientist Award
Institute: {'code': 'VA', 'abbreviation': 'VA', 'name': 'Veterans Affairs', 'admin_org_id': '12500964', 'admin_funding_url': ''}. PI: ELIZABETH M YANO. Award: $.
Start: 2026-10-01T00:00:00.
As a VA HSR Senior Research Career Scientist Awardee (SRCSA), my research productivity and real-world
impacts have earned me national recognition by the VA Secretary, Under Secretary for Health, and Disabled
American Veterans, and an Endowed Chair of Medicine and Alumni Hall of Fame Award at UCLA. My research
is internationally recognized in primary care (PC) and women’s health (WH), with extensive collaborative
networks and mentorship of dozens of early- and mid-career investigators. My research has focused on
organizational factors associated with VA performance and evidence-based quality improvement (EBQI)
approaches to implementing evidence-based practices and care models in VA and tailoring them to Veterans’
needs. I have published 319 papers (h-index=65), half in the past 10 years (160). Of those, 60% were during
this SRCSA (94), of which a third (31) were first- or senior-authored. I have led $45M in funded projects (past
10 years), leading 15 grants in FY20-26. I have given 110 presentations, 20 cyberseminars, and 33 briefings to
external stakeholders (e.g., other federal agencies, Congress, White House) during my current SRCSA.
Since 2013, I have directed the VA HSR Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation &
Policy (CSHIIP), which has been consistently scored among the best in the country for its research impacts.
My leadership has contributed to increased CSHIIP career development award (CDA) and research career
scientist award (RCSA) success (from one each to 12 CDAs and 4 RCSAs), recruitment/retention of a stellar
workforce, 20+ VA program office partnerships, and major QUERI/operations funding for a robust portfolio.
I was originally recruited to VA to evaluate the first PC demonstration project, which with my first VA HSR IIR
led to shifts to team-based PC. I then studied national policy implementation using organizational surveys
linked to VA quality metrics. I later co-led one of five Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) Demonstration Labs to
test EBQI effectiveness on implementation, increasing PACT innovation and speed. I also studied depression
collaborative care to improve PC-based treatment, which contributed to VA’s PC-mental health integration
policy. I remain senior advisor to the national VA PC Analytics Team, with plans for new national PC delivery
model research and evaluation over the course of my SRCSA renewal.
Given my healthcare epidemiology and health policy training, I have always focused on how we use research
to inform evidence-based practice/policy in ways that optimize the health of the Veteran population. In studying
how PC organization influenced care quality, I noted unexplained sex differences, pivoting to study how VA WH
care was organized and how variations affected WH outcomes, with results used to improve VA WH policy. I
have a VA proposal currently under review to reprise this work with new provider-level data and state-of-the-art
analytics. Melding my EBQI and WH research, I led a cluster randomized trial of EBQI effectiveness in tailoring
PACT to women’s needs, leading to Office of WH national EBQI rollout. In 2010, HSR asked me to build VA
WH research capacity, leading to the VA WH Research Network (WHRN, 2010-26), which now has over 450
Consortium members, 30 CDAs, and 77 VAs in a practice-based research network enabling multisite research,
while increasing publication rates, portfolio size/diversity, and research impacts. VA HSR later used WHRN’s
Consortium as a model for consortia (COREs) in suicide prevention, chronic pain, virtual care, among others,
while I also built a network of VA researchers to advance research on VA’s electronic health record transition.
Collectively, I have pioneered partnered research and multilevel stakeholder engagement methods to increase
research impacts on real-world outcomes and toward greater realization of VA as a learning health system. I
have dedicated my career to VA and my 7-year roadmap lays out my plans for advancing new VA PC and WH
research, methodological advances, mentorship, and service, while successfully leading CSHIIP and WHRN.document fetched 2026-10-24 02:46