BACKGROUND/RATIONALE:
The Research Career Scientist (RCS) Award is designed to reward and promote high quality, productive senior level research investigators. Dr. Weaver has maintained her productivity as a scientist in her 4rd year of funding.

Dr. Weaver has been a research investigator in VA for over 33 years. She has served as the HSR&D COIN director (formerly the COE) for 10 years and was the SCI QUERI research director for almot 15 years. Over the years, she has had grant funding from HSR&D and the VA Cooperative Studies program, from VA operations offices, from NIH, and most recently from Medtronic, PCORI, DOD and AHRQ. She is a professor in the Division of Public Health Sciences, Stritch School of Medicine, Loyola Univeristy. She joined Loyola as a faculty in 2009 after spending almost 20 years at Northwestern University.

Her research focus began in the area of long term care, having worked with the Office of Geriatrics and Extended Care and VA's national Pharmacy program on several partner-based evaluations, before the concept of partnered-research was recognized as important to implement research findings. She then turned her attention to research in neurologic conditions, particularly focusing on spinal cord injuries and disorders (with her work through QUERI) and Parkinson's disease (with support from VA's cooperative studies program, HSR&D and now Medtronic). Most recently, her research has included an emphasis on patient centered care and the use of new delivery models involving technology. She continues her work in SCI, with a focus on bone health collaborating with a rheumatologist, Dr. Laura Carbone with DOD and VA HSRD funding. On the university side, she serves as the site PI for the CAPriCORN CDRN, funded by PCORI and for a newly funded AHRQ grant which incorporates the patient inventory she developed with HSR&D funding. The inventory will be part of a clinical decision support tool to improve care delivery and outcomes.

During her career, Dr. Weaver has mentored researchers and staff at all levels, from undergraduates and medical students, to pre and post doctoral fellows, career development awardees, and young clinicians wanting to do research. Currently she is mentoring a CSR&D physician awardee, a RR&D PhD awardee, and a physician who was awarded an NIH Gemstar award.

Dr. Weaver has over 165 published journal articles, predominately as either first or senior author. Over her career she has averaged almost 6 publications/year. She has and continues to provide service to VA locally and nationally through review committees, search and promotion committees, and governance groups. She has had continuous grant funding from VA since 1998. In 2015 she was designated as a FACA member and serves as vice chair of panel #3 of SMRB.

OBJECTIVE(S):
One of the goals of the Hines COI is to conduct high quality innovative health services research that addresses how to provide evidence-based care and management of persons with chronic diseases. Dr. Weaver's focus is in three areas: implementation of evidence-based results in spinal cord injuries and disorders; clinical trials, program evaluation, and evidence-development research in Parkinson's disease and other chronic conditions, and use of new delivery models such as ehealth technologies as a means to deliver evidence-based care and evaluate patient centered outcomes.

METHODS:
Dr. Weaver utilizes mixed methods in her research. She has conducted clinical trials, program evaluation, survey research, secondary data analysis, and qualitative data collection and analysis. She is developing expertise in the area of technology based health care delivery, working with the My HealtheVet Program and eHealth QUERI. In addition, through her efforts with the PCORI CDRN, she is learning about development of computer-generated phenotypes (for cohort identification) and how to engage patients in research.

FINDINGS/RESULTS:
Not yet available.

IMPACT:
Dr. Weaver remains highly productive in areas of high priority and relevance to VA. She just completed her VA SDP to develop and test a tool to increase delivery of patient centered care. This tool (the inventory) has been incorporated into a grant submitted to AHRQ to develop clinical decision support for improving contextualization of care. She is also a site PI (Loyola) on for a PCORI funded clinical data research network (CDRN) funded involving most of the major Chicago area healthcare institutions. This network will serve as the basis for conducting observational and comparative effectiveness trials within the network and across other CDRNs at the national level. We are currently involved in 2 large observation trials and are negotiating to be involved in 2 CER trials.
In addition to her research and service activities, Dr. Weaver has been a successful mentor. She is currently mentoring two VA CDA awardees, and one NIH Gemstar awardee. Several of her mentees have gone on to successful careers in VA research.

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External Links for this Project

NIH Reporter

Grant Number: IK6RX002991-01
Link: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9612868

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PUBLICATIONS:

None at this time.

DRA: Aging, Older Veterans' Health and Care, Health Systems Science, Brain and Spinal Cord Injuries and Disorders
DRE: Epidemiology
Keywords: none
MeSH Terms: none