Presented by: Marzena Sasnal
Talk Title: “Rapid Cycle Evaluation of Qualitative Data to Implement a Pragmatic Clinical Trial”

Bio: Dr. Marzena Sasnal is a qualitative & mixed method-oriented social scientist and methodologist, experienced in migration, health services, and education research with publication record, grant support, and project management expertise. She holds a BA in international relations and affairs, an MA in sociology, and a PhD in social sciences. Dr. Sasnal currently works as Senior Research Analyst at the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) and is thrilled to contribute to research aiming to improve education. Before joining CREDO, she was a senior researcher at The Stanford-Surgery Policy Improvement Research and Education (S-SPIRE) Center for several years, collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to improve the value of healthcare through research that informs policy and implementation. She also served as a qualitative methodologist, providing instruction and consultation on research methods and techniques. Previously, she studied the adaptation processes of highly skilled migrants in Silicon Valley as a part of her doctoral dissertation.

Each week, S-SPIRE hosts a hybrid-model Work-In-Progress session (WIP) for faculty members and trainees to present their research and receive feedback. These run from September through May each year.

Our monthly WIP sessions (first Monday of every month) features Stanford and guest faculty presentations of well-developed projects. This WIP provides an opportunity to discuss high impact research and create synergy within the Stanford HSR/Surgery communities.

Presented by: Laura Graham, PhD, Epedimiologist, S-SPIRE Center, Stanford University.
Talk Title: “TBD”

Bio: Laura is a health services researcher with a wide variety of experience in data management and analysis, including large multi-center health services and outcomes research studies, provider survey studies, and laboratory-oriented research. Her research interest include surgical outcomes research, informatics, and implementation science to translate evidence into practice. The bulk of her research experience is centered around the use and analysis of large administrative datasets collected by the Veterans Health Administration. She has been involved in a multitude of Health Services Research & Development funded and unfunded studies using these administrative data to assess surgical outcomes.

Each week, S-SPIRE hosts a Work-In-Progress session (WIP) for faculty members and trainees to present their research and receive feedback on projects in every phase of development—from drafting specific aims pages, to parsing grant review committee comments, to abstracts/papers/methods in preparation.

Please refer inquiries to Ana Mezynski at mezynski@stanford.edu

The Weekly WIP has been canceled due to Thanksgiving week.

Each week, S-SPIRE hosts an in-person Work-In-Progress session (WIP) for faculty members and trainees to present their research and receive feedback on projects in every phase of development—from drafting specific aims pages, to parsing grant review committee comments, to abstracts/papers/methods in preparation.

Please refer inquiries to Ana Mezynski at mezynski@stanford.edu

Speaker: Lisa Marie Knowlton, MD, Assistant Professor of Surgery, General Surgery, Stanford University.
Talk Title: “Understanding Patient-Level Facilitators and Barriers of California Emergency Medicaid Programs”

Bio: Dr. Knowlton is a trauma and critical care surgeon and NIH funded public health researcher whose focus is on improving access to and quality of care for trauma and surgical patients. She obtained her medical degree at McGill University and completed her general surgery residency at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Her desire to understand varied healthcare systems and develop solutions for vulnerable surgical populations led her to obtain an M.P.H. at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and complete a research fellowship at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. Most recently, she trained as a Surgical Critical Care fellow at Stanford University Medical Center and joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Surgery in early 2018.

Dr. Knowlton’s research focuses on improving health equity, addressing barriers in access to care and reducing disparities among vulnerable surgical populations, including underinsured trauma patients. She is also investigating the financial burden that injury imposes upon both patients and hospitals, with the goal of finding economically sustainable strategies for ensuring best outcomes among trauma patients. These include the study of emergency Medicaid programs at the state and national level. Dr. Knowlton’s work has been funded by the American College of Surgeons (the 17th C. James Carrico Faculty Research Fellowship), the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST) and the NIH. She has received an R21 by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and most recently an R01 for her work (2023-2028). Dr. Knowlton is board certified by the American Board of Surgery and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. She is a member of the AAST Diversity and Inclusion and Healthcare Economics Committees, and also serves on the Association for Academic Surgery’s Publications Committee. She was the inaugural Chair of the Associate Member Council of the AAST and currently serves as the Associate Vice Chair of Research for the Stanford Department of Surgery. She was recently recognized by the AAST by receiving the 2023 Canizaro award for best presentation and manuscript at the annual meeting. Dr. Knowlton was also selected as the 2023-24 U.S. recipient of the James IV Surgical Association Traveling Fellowship.

For inquiries, please contact Ana Mezynski at mezynski@stanford.edu.

Speaker: Alexa Pohl, MD, PhD, PD Resident, General Surgery, Department of Surgery, Stanford University
Talk Title: “How Should We Measure Patient Transportation Insecurity?”

Bio: Social context creates disparities in cancer care across broad domains: in screening, time to start of treatment, timely receipt of appropriate neoadjuvant, surgical, and adjuvant therapies, and in receipt of surveillance for survivors. Pragmatic, patient-centered research on the root causes of disparities – and rigorous evaluation of policies and programs to address these causes – is needed to reduce preventable cancer mortality. My longstanding interest in health-related disparities and patient-centered research arose while completing my PhD on sex-differential autism risk at the University of Cambridge. I grew uncomfortable with the fact that my research relied on the time and commitment of participants but would never improve their lives directly. As a result, I developed a community-based participatory research study on the experiences of autistic mothers, which received pilot funding from the UK’s National Institute of Healthcare Research (NIHR) Collaboration for Applied Health Research and Care East of England. For me, the natural next step was medical school, where I was surprised to find an intellectual home in surgery. The introspective and self-critiquing nature of the specialty resonated with my desire to ask pragmatic, outcome-focused questions as a researcher and my clinical desire to make a tangible improvement in patients’ lives. Ultimately, I aim to be a practicing surgeon with a productive research program on patient-centered outcomes and the effective and equitable delivery of high-quality oncologic surgical care.

Please refer inquiries to Ana Mezynski at mezynski@stanford.edu

Canceled due to mandatory winter closure.

Each week, S-SPIRE hosts a Work-In-Progress session (WIP) for faculty members and trainees to present their research and receive feedback on projects in every phase of development—from drafting specific aims pages, to parsing grant review committee comments, to abstracts/papers/methods in preparation.

Please refer inquiries to Ana Mezynski at mezynski@stanford.edu