HSR&D Research Scientist Alex Sox-Harris, PhD, investigator at the HSR&D Center for Health Care Evaluation in Palo Alto, will receive the 2010 American Psychological Association Division 18 (Psychology in the Public Interest) VA Section Outstanding Researcher Award.
Dr. Sox-Harris is being recognized for a program of research that is high-impact, policy relevant, and directly impacts the nature and quality of care received by Veterans. His primary research program involves developing and validating measures of treatment quality for substance use disorders. Through his research and involvement with policy groups, Dr. Sox-Harris has exposed the pitfalls of the traditional means of developing quality measures, and has proposed a new strategy recently published in Medicare Care. His work on developing, validating, and refining quality measures of substance use disorder treatment has changed the landscape of quality measurement in this area, informing a new emphasis on processes of care that are more tightly linked to outcomes and emphasizing the need to supplement process measures with structure, access, and outcome quality measures.
Dr. Sox-Harris has published 54 peer-reviewed articles and nine book chapters. He is currently Principal Investigator on four federal grants, six currently-funded grants on which he is a Co-Investigator, and is sought out for quality measurement, methodological, and statistical consultation by investigators throughout the VA and Stanford research communities. Dr. Sox-Harris will receive the APA award in August 2010.