Center for Public Health Preparedness

LAMPS Core

Principal Investigator: K. "Vish" Viswanath, PhD

Co-Principal Investigator: Michael A. Stoto, PhD

In this project a Core will coordinate and integrate the efforts of four LAMPS research projects, as well as support new research investigators and pilot projects.  Each of the research projects initially focuses on one of the steps in the Cycle before moving through subsequent steps or even the entire Cycle in iterative fashion, as appropriate to the project. With each starting at a different step of the Cycle, the four projects have been expressly selected to view the overarching research questions (What are the purposes of assessing PHEP? What specifically should be measured? How should this be accomplished? How well can this be achieved?) through multiple, diverse lenses. While each project on its own is designed to achieve the overall LAMPS goal of developing criteria and metrics to assess PHEP for public health systems, they have been strategically aligned to reinforce, validate, and refine the baseline findings and assumptions of our collective work, allowing us to evolve beyond the dominant paradigms of PHEP and make novel and meaningful contributions to the field. Through the Core, LAMPS will ensure training and mentoring of new research investigators committed to the science of PHEP measurement.  Each year, LAMPS will select and partially fund: (1) a new research investigator and (2) a pilot project that s/he will lead.  Specifically, LAMPS will provide PHEP research training for recent qualified HSPH graduates or new junior faculty at any LAMPS-affiliated institution, utilizing HSPH courses and related research opportunities.  The program will highlight the key dimensions of public health systems research including biostatistics, epidemiology, operations research and modeling, and the behavioral and social health sciences.  The goal is to support new investigators to pursue independent research in PHEP.  Such investigators are the innovators of the future who will bring fresh ideas and pioneer new areas of investigation.

Principal Investigator:
K. "Vish" Viswanath, PhD serves as the Principal Investigator for LAMPS.  Dr. Viswanath's is an Associate Professor at HSPH and an investigator in the HSPH CPHP as well as at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). Dr. Viswanath is a national leader in health communication science who has pioneered studies on communication inequalities and social change in both the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Viswanath is currently funded by the NIH on a study to promote health information access among the underserved, to develop infrastructure to reduce cancer disparities in three Massachusetts communities, and to direct the health communication core of the DF/HCC. As a former Associate Director of Behavioral Research at the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Viswanath also has extensive experience in administering complex scientific enterprises and projects. He chairs the HSPH Steering Committee on Health Communication Concentration and directs the Health Communication Core at DF/HCC. He was recently invited to Chair the CDC Board of Scientific Councilors of the National Center for Health Marketing. Dr. Viswanath and colleagues have an extensive track record in conducting large-scale studies in measurements and metrics, risk communication, communication inequalities, and PHEP .

Co-Principal Investigator: 
Michael A. Stoto, PhD serves as the Co-Principal Investigator for LAMPS.  One of the leading PHEP performance measurement experts in the country, Dr. Stoto is currently an Adjunct Professor of Biostatistics at HSPH, Director of the Evaluation Core of the HSPH CPHP, and Professor of Health Systems Administration and Population Health at Georgetown University.  He currently leads the evaluation team for the DC Healthcare Coalition Emergency Management Partnership, funded by the DHHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), and recently completed a multi-site project investigating regional approaches to PHEP funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations Public Health Systems Research initiative. With extensive experience in the application of quantitative and qualitative research methods to guide public health policy and practice, including the development of Healthy People 2000, Dr. Stoto has conducted research on PHEP measurement and improvement, as well as on public health interventions, and ethical issues in research and practice.  He has published extensively, is a co-editor of an IOM report that provided public health data for the Washington, DC area, and authored the chapter on evaluation in Public Health Administration, now in its second edition.

Co-Investigators:
Marcia Testa, PhD, MPH serves as the director of the New Research Investigators and Pilot Project Program.  She is a Senior Lecturer in biostatistics at HSPH, a member of the HSPH CPHP Evaluation Core, and Director of the HSPH MPH Program in Quantitative Methods, a collaboration between the HSPH Departments of Biostatistics and Epidemiology. The program trains students (already holding an MD, PhD, or ScD) in a curriculum that results in the MPH in Quantitative Methods. Dr. Testa's primary methodological research expertise come from thirty years experience in psychometrics, measurement and evaluation developing survey instruments for the assessment of health, functioning, and performance. For HSPH CPHP, she has led training evaluation design and assessment, created an online data bank of educational evaluation surveys for training and assessment, and has developed instruments for assessing public health workforce competency and training.  She also has thirty years experience as a faculty member in medicine and public health, teaching public health methods and practice and serving on numerous public health accreditation, credentialing, and curriculum development committees.

Elena Savoia, MD, MPH is a research scientist in the Division of Public Health Practice at HSPH. She joined the HSPH-CPHP in 2004 and has worked on the development of evaluation methods to assess the reliability and validity of capacity, and performance measures designed to assess the  public health system's response to large scale emergencies. In particular, she has implemented over 100 surveys in the specific field of emergency preparedness and collected and analyzed data from over 5,000 respondents. In year 1, as a New Research Investigator, Dr. Savoia will lead the Core Pilot project entitled "Linking Assessment & Measurement to Performance in National Surveys" and will be responsible for supervising the monitoring and evaluation of the four program projects. In years 2-5, Dr. Savoia will serve as a Co-Investigator in the Core.

LAMPS Organizational Structure

Projects:

 
Contact Information:
Center for Public Health Preparedness
Harvard School of Public Health
677 Huntington Ave., Landmark 3rd Floor East
Boston, MA 02115
Phone: 617-495-4000
Email: preparedness@hsph.harvard.edu