Abstract

A. Rani Elwy, PhD, is a 20-year VA health services researcher and implementation scientist, based at the Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research, a VA HSR&D Center of Innovation at the VA Bedford Healthcare System. Her work exemplifies HSR&D’s embedded research goals: products and deliverables from her work are now part of VHA national policy and practice. Dr. Elwy has served as Principal Investigator on three HSR&D grants (IAC 07-087, IIR 07-199, and SDR 11-440), and as PI or MPI on four QUERI projects, partnered evaluation initiatives and programs (RRP 13-436; PEC 16-354; QUE 20-017; EBP 22-104). She has also served as PI or subaward PI on an additional 16 grants, and co-investigator on 22 further grants, funded by HSR&D, QUERI, CSR&D, NIH, CDC and PCORI. She has published 106 peer- reviewed articles, and has delivered 69 invited and 54 peer-reviewed international, national and regional presentations. She has received the HSR&D Best Research Paper Award, four Excellence in Teaching Awards, and is a Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine. Dr. Elwy’s work has been cited in national and international media such as CBS News, The Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report, and the UK’s Daily Mail. She serves on COVID-19 workgroups of the World Health Organization and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and attended, by invitation, the White House Summit on the Future of COVID-19 Vaccines. Dr. Elwy is a former fellow of the Implementation Research Institute, and is a Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University. Through HSR&D and QUERI funding, Dr. Elwy has created evidence to answer research questions important to VA leaders, developed deliverables and tested these through implementation projects, and generated sustainment for this evidence-base through changes in national policy and practice within the Veterans Health Administration. This evidence to implementation to sustainment roadmap has been possible through extensive training in implementation science, received through Dr. Elwy’s roles as QUERI implementation research coordinator, NIH-VA implementation science trainee, and VA health services researcher and implementation science principal investigator. Dr. Elwy continuously gives back to the implementation science field, serving as invited faculty on NIH-funded implementation science training courses since 2016, participating in national organizations and committees seeking to use implementation science to improve health and health care, and serving as a committed mentor to 53 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and early career faculty over the course of her 20-year career. Dr. Elwy’s career goals are to improve Veterans’ health and health care, through building VA implementation science capacity, and training and mentoring the next generation of VA researchers. Her strategies for providing support and caring through mentorship, developed through years of navigating her own health services and implementation science career, are the focus of her “Behind the Scenes CV”, a behind the scenes look at success that is not always understood and recognized by mentees, and what is needed for building and retaining the VA health services research and implementation science workforce. A Research Career Scientist Award will allow Dr. Elwy to devote even more of her time to ensuring that HSR&D does not lose highly regarded, talented, and skilled scientists as a result of misplaced perceptions of what it takes to succeed as a VA health services researcher. Additionally, a Research Career Scientist Award will provide the time needed for Dr. Elwy to develop expertise in policy implementation, a necessary step in her continued goal of building capacity in implementation science throughout VA. Developing policy implementation skills will allow her to focus on increasing further evidence- based policy implementation, building on her newly-funded QUERI Evidence, Policy and Implementation Center (EBP-22-104) and sharing this knowledge and skills to ensure a broad base of experts in this area.

NIH Reporter Project Information: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10700260


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