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Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and Education Heersink School of Medicine

Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and Education

Methods Symposium

Initiated in 2009, the annual Methods Symposium is a signature program of the UAB Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and Education. The overarching goal of the Methods Symposium is to provide a general overview and framework for recent developments and novel directions in a health services research (HSR) methodological area. The Symposium is intended for an interdisciplinary and interprofessional HSR audience across the career arc, from students to faculty at all ranks, and includes presentations from national thought leaders in a timely thematic methodological area, culminating with the Meredith Kilgore Endowed Lectureship sponsored by the UAB School of Public Health. The Kilgore Endowed Lectureship was established in 2020 to honor the late Dr. Kilgore’s innumerable contributions to HSR, mentorship, and training at UAB, including roles as Co-Director of the COERE and its AHRQ T32 until his untimely passing in 2019. Previously held in-person, the COERE is pleased to now offer the Symposium in hybrid format.

  • We are pleased to offer Travel Awards for the 2025 Symposium!
    Please see below for eligibility, timeline, and the online application. 
    Travel Awards 

    2025 Travel Awards

    I. Eligibility

    Students, trainees, and early-stage investigators outside of UAB are eligible for Travel Awards to offset expenses related to attending the 2025 Symposium in-person at UAB. Considerations will be given for AHRQ alignment, career stage, potential impact of in-person attendance on career trajectory, and representation across U.S. institutions and U.S. geographic locations.

    II. Timeline

    Travel Award application deadline is December 15, 2024 at 11:59pm CST. Awardees will be notified of selection by email before February 1, 2025.

    III. Allowable expenses

    Up to $1,000 will be provided to cover the following travel-related expenses:

    If traveling to Birmingham, AL by plane:

    • Basic economy airfare
    • Airport parking or transportation to and from your residence and airport
    • Transportation to and from Birmingham airport and UAB
    • Hotel reservation for 1-2 nights, as justified by travel arrangements
    • Up to 2 meals, as justified by travel arrangements
    • Mileage and parking if driving your personal car to UAB

     IV. Expectations of Awardees

    1. Awardees are expected to arrive in Birmingham, AL in time for dinner at 6pm on Wednesday April 9, 2025. Awardees are expected to attend the Symposium at UAB on Thursday April 10, 2025 until 3pm.
    2. Awardees are expected to respond to all program evaluation requests in a timely fashion for up to 2 years post-Symposium.
    3. Awardees are expected to comply with all UAB Travel policies and work with the Symposium planning committee to organize travel and reimbursements as outlined in the section V. below. The Symposium planning committee will communicate all relevant guidelines and instructions in the Notice of Travel Award letter and will be available by phone and email to answer questions and provide guidance during the work week.
    4. Awardees are responsible for paying for travel expenses that exceed the amount awarded in the Notice of Travel Award letter.

     V. Travel coordination responsibilities and payment logistics

    1. Awardees will not be given direct payments. Allowable travel expenses will be prepaid on the awardee’s behalf or reimbursed to the awardee after the Symposium. See the following statements for more details.  
    2. Hotel reservations will be coordinated and prepaid by the Symposium planning committee. Awardees may request a reservation for the nights of April 9 and/or April 10, as justified by travel arrangements. Reservation requests are due by March 3, 2025.
    3. Airfare reservations will be coordinated and prepaid by the Symposium planning committee. Awardees will select their flight of choice and provide all necessary information for booking on their behalf by March 3, 2025.
    4. Awardees will organize the following travel items, as needed: airport parking, transportation to and from residence and airport (Uber, Lyft, taxi), transportation to and from Birmingham airport and UAB (Uber, Lyft, Taxi), up to 2 meals that are not already provided by the Symposium and occur during travel, and mileage and the associated parking. Expenses for these travel items will be reimbursed after the Symposium and upon receipt of required documentation. Reimbursement will require that awardees register in the UAB iSupplier system. We advise that awardees complete registration prior to attending the Symposium to prevent delays with processing reimbursements.  

    APPLY HERE

    For questions about the application and application process, please contact mmjean@uab.edu 

    For travel-related inquiries, please contact aganoe@uabmc.edu

     

  • 2025 Registration Coming Soon!

  • 2025 Methods Symposium Travel Awards

    • 2024 Methods Symposium - Scientific Methods to Support Implementation Sciences

      MS2024.jpeg

      Centered around the theme of Implementation Science, the Annual COERE Methods Symposium is a half-day event featuring presentations by national thought leaders and UAB scholars in the field. This symposium aims to offer a comprehensive overview for a diverse research audience on health services and outcomes while also delving into recent developments and innovative directions. This symposium will feature talks on methods, models, and frameworks relevant to the field of implementation science.  Composed of four distinguished speakers, this year's symposium will feature talks from Drs. Eva Woodward from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Jereme Wilroy from The University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Alicia Bunger from The Ohio State University.  The symposium reaches its pinnacle with the Meredith Kilgore Endowed Lectureship delivered by Dr. Maria Fernandez from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, generously sponsored by the UAB School of Public Health. Established in 2020, the Kilgore Endowed Lectureship serves as a tribute to the late Dr. Kilgore, commemorating his substantial contributions to health services and outcomes research, as well as his impactful roles as the Co-Director of the COERE and the UAB Health Services Research Training Program.

      Thursday, January 18, 2024, from 8:30-1:30PM

      The Edge of Chaos (1700 University Blvd, 4th Floor of Lister Hill Libary) with Hybrid Option

      Speakers

      • María E. Fernández, PhD
        María E. Fernández, PhD

        María E. Fernández, PhD

        María E. Fernández, PhD

        UTHealth Houston

        Dr. María Fernández is Vice President of Population Health and Implementation Science at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) and the founding Co-Director of the UTHealth Houston Institute for Implementation Science. Dr. Fernández is also the Lorne Bain Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Medicine, Professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences, and Director of the UTHealth Houston Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research (CHPPR) at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. As a researcher and a leader, Dr. Fernández has spent her career conducting participatory community-engaged research and practice to develop, evaluate, implement, and disseminate interventions to improve health and health equity. Her research focuses on cancer and chronic disease prevention and control among underserved populations in the U.S. and globally. Dr. Fernández is an expert in dissemination and implementation (D&I) research, having served as a member of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health Study Section and as faculty for several national and international D&I training programs. Dr. Fernández has an extensive portfolio of global, federal, and state-funded research developing and improving evidence-based interventions and guidelines for the prevention and control of cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease in clinical and public health settings. Dr. Fernández has over 200 peer-reviewed publications and has co-authored several books, including the 4th edition of Planning Health Promotion Programs: An Intervention Mapping Approach (2016) and the Handbook of Community-based Participatory Research (2017). Her awards include the Association for Schools and Programs of Public Health Research Excellence Award and the UTHealth President's Scholar Award for Research Excellence.

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      • Alicia C. Bunger, MSW, PhD
        Alicia C. Bunger, MSW, PhD

        Alicia C. Bunger, MSW, PhD

        Alicia C. Bunger, MSW, PhD

        The Ohio State University

        Alicia C. Bunger, MSW, PhD is an Associate Professor at the College of Social Work at The Ohio State University. Her research program centers on how health and human service organizations coordinate to implement evidence-based interventions, promote service access across systems, and integrate care for children and families. Bunger’s research engages community partners to examine organizational and system-level strategies by blending implementation and inter-organizational relationships research. This work often focuses on the intersection of child welfare and behavioral health systems. It is designed to inform strategies for closing gaps in care access and quality. She is trained as a mental health services researcher with an emphasis on implementation in organizations and systems. Bunger earned a PhD in social work from Washington University in St. Louis and completed post-doctoral training in mental health services and systems research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and US Children’s Bureau, among others. Bunger's profile at the College of Social Work can be found here: https://csw.osu.edu/about/faculty-staff/faculty-directory/bunger-alicia-ph-d/

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      • Eva Woodward, PhD
        Eva Woodward, PhD

        Eva Woodward, PhD

        Eva Woodward, PhD

        University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

        Dr. Eva Woodward is a clinical health psychologist and implementation scientist. In her research, she uses implementation science and practice, community engaged research, and mixed methods to improve equitable health care delivery for groups experiencing disparities and oppression, such as racially minoritized, sexual minority (lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer), low-income, and rural-dwelling individuals. Her work focuses on implementing interventions in hospital settings. She complements her research as a clinician in primary care mental health integration. She is also a trainer for the Implementation Facilitation Learning Hub operated by Behavioral Health Quality Enhancement Research Initiative through the Veterans Health Administration. Dr. Woodward currently works at the VA Center for Mental Healthcare and Outcomes Research (Little Rock, Arkansas) and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Originally from rural Oklahoma, she trained at Suffolk University in Boston (Ph.D.) and Brown University in Providence (internship/residency). Dr. Woodward completed the two-year Advanced Fellowship Program at the VA South Central Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center in Little Rock before becoming faculty. She also graduated from the NIH Health Disparities Research Institute, and the Implementation Research Institute fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis. As a trainee, she was awarded the Distinguished Student Contribution from the American Psychological Association’s division on Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. Research interests: implementation science, health equity, primary care mental health integration, health psychology, implementation facilitation.

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      • Jereme Wilroy, PhD
        Jereme Wilroy, PhD

        Jereme Wilroy, PhD

        Jereme Wilroy, PhD

        University of Alabama at Birmingham

        Dr. Wilroy received his B.S. degree in Exercise Science, M.A. in Health Studies, and PhD in Health Education and Promotion from the University of Alabama. He completed two post-doctoral fellowships; one-year at Lakeshore Foundation in Birmingham, Alabama, and two years at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He began his research career at UA as a master’s student surveying individuals with disabilities about topics of interest for a holistic health website. As a doctoral student, he developed and validated a theory-based instrument to predict physical activity among people with spinal cord injury as part of his dissertation and funded with a fellowship through the graduate school. As a post-doc, he obtained a fellowship from the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation and developed an online program for increasing physical activity behavior among people with spinal cord injury. Dr. Wilroy’s research philosophy is to conduct research that centers on the needs of the patient and improves the capacity of clinicians to recommend specific exercise routines. The focus of his research is on the psychosocial aspects of adherence to exercise trials among people with physical disabilities. His current research projects include: a) recruiting PM&R patients into a large randomized controlled trial of a home-based exercise intervention, and b) identifying decisions points for piloting a sequential multiphase assignment randomized trial of an exercise and behavioral coaching intervention for people with physical disabilities.

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      2024 Sponsors MS

    • 2023 Methods Symposium - Scientific Methods to Support Health Equity Research

      Copy of MOST Symposium Banner Final

      Centered around the theme of Scientific Methods to Support Health Equity research, the Annual COERE Methods Symposium is a half-day event featuring presentations by national thought leaders and UAB scholars in the field. This symposium aims to offer a comprehensive overview for a diverse health services and outcomes research audience while also delving into recent developments and innovative directions. The 2023 symposium featured talks on methods, models, and frameworks relevant to the field of health equity. Composed of four distinguished speakers, the 2023 symposium included Drs. Brita Roy from NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Dione King from The University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Patrick Sullivan from Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health. The symposium reached its pinnacle with the Meredith Kilgore Endowed Lectureship delivered by Dr. Olugbenga Ogedegbe from NYU Grossman School of Medicine, generously sponsored by the UAB School of Public Health. Established in 2020, the Kilgore Endowed Lectureship serves as a tribute to the late Dr. Kilgore, commemorating his substantial contributions to health services and outcomes research, as well as his impactful roles as the Co-Director of the COERE and the UAB Health Services Research Training Program. The Symposium continues to reach large local and national audiences with 63 attendees in-person and 130 attendees online.

      Thursday, January 19, 2023, from 8:00-12:00PM

      The Edge of Chaos (1700 University Blvd, 4th Floor of Lister Hill Libary) with Hybrid Option

      Speakers

      • Olugbenga Ogedegbe, MD, MPH
        Olugbenga Ogedegbe, MD, MPH

        Olugbenga Ogedegbe, MD, MPH

        Gbenga Ogedegbe, MD, MPH

        NYU Grossman School of Medicine

        Gbenga Ogedegbe, a physician, is Professor of Population Health & Medicine, Chief Division of Health & Behavior, and Director Center for Healthful Behavior Change at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Gbenga is a leading expert on health disparities research; his work focuses on the implementation of evidence-based interventions for cardiovascular risk reduction in minority populations. He is Principal Investigator on numerous NIH projects and has expanded his work globally to Sub-Saharan Africa where he is funded by the NIH to strengthen research capacity and reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases. He has co-authored over 250 publications and his work has been recognized by receipt of several research and mentoring awards including the prestigious John M. Eisenberg Excellence in Mentorship Award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Daniel Savage Science Award. He has served on numerous scientific panels including the NIH, CDC, World Health Organization, and the European Union Research Council. Prior to joining NYU, he was faculty at Cornell Weill Medical School and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

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      • Patrick Sullivan, DVM, PhD
        Patrick Sullivan, DVM, PhD

        Patrick Sullivan, DVM, PhD

        Patrick Sullivan, DVM, PhD

        Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health

        Patrick Sullivan is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, and Co-Director of the Prevention Sciences Core at Emory’s Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). He has worked in HIV prevention for 26 years. Before coming to his current position at Emory, Patrick worked at CDC as an EIS officer and in HIV Surveillance programs.

        Dr. Sullivan’s research focuses on HIV among men who have sex with men, including behavioral research, interventions, implementation, and surveillance, and he is a PI in the UNC/Emory Adolescent Trials Network Center and a member of the HPTN SGM Scientific Committee.

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      • Dione King, PhD
        Dione King, PhD

        Dione King, PhD

        Dione King, PhD

        University of Alabama at Birmingham

        Dione King is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at UAB's College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. King’s long-standing commitment to disadvantaged, vulnerable, and marginalized populations is evidenced through her professional and research experiences working with children and families in juvenile justice, child welfare, education, nonprofit, and homeless/transitional housing settings. Her research focuses on health behaviors and health disparities that impact the adolescent and young adult life experience including dating violence, delinquency, substance use, mental health, and sexual risk behaviors while giving attention to social determinants of health and the promotion of health behaviors.

        Dr. King lives by the motto, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This quote taken directly from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 Letter from a Birmingham jail has resonated with her as a social worker and reflects the impact she seeks to make in the lives of individuals, families, communities, and systems.

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      • Brita Roy, MD, MPH, MHS
        Brita Roy, MD, MPH, MHS

        Brita Roy, MD, MPH, MHS

        Brita Roy, MD, MPH, MHS

        NYU Grossman School of Medicine

        Brita Roy, MD, MPH, MHS is Associate Professor of Population Health and Medicine and Director of Community Health and Clinical Outcomes for Beyond Bridges.

        Dr. Roy is a clinician-investigator who uses epidemiology, complex systems modeling, and community-engaged approaches to investigate the effect of positive psychosocial factors on health outcomes at the individual, community, and clinic/health system levels. She co-authored an evidence-based, actionable, community-level theoretical framework defining and describing collective well-being and its drivers and outcomes. She works to implement programs and processes to improve health outcomes equitably across our health system and communities that we serve. Finally, Dr. Roy also enjoys teaching health professions students and internal medicine residents in the classroom while taking care of a diverse array of patients on the inpatient general medicine service.

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      Thank you to our 2023 Sponsors:

      Symposium Sponsors 2023 2

    • 2022 Methods Symposium - Present and Future of the Multiphase Optimization Strategy & Optimization Trial Design
      2022 MS Banner

      Featuring the Meredith Kilgore Endowed Lecturer, Linda Collins, PhD, this half-day virtual symposium is designed to provide local and national attendees with a general overview, recent developments, and current projects regarding the multiphase optimization strategy of intervention development and testing.

      Thursday, February 17, 2022, from 8:00-12:30PM

      Zoom

      Speakers

      • Linda M. Collins, PhD
        Linda M. Collins, PhD

        Linda M. Collins, PhD

        Linda M. Collins, PhD

        NYU School of Global Public Health

        Linda M. Collins is Professor of Global Public Health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Biostatistics. She earned her B.A. in Psychology at the University of Connecticut and her Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology at the University of Southern California.

        Collins’ research interests are focused on the development, dissemination, and application of the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST), a framework for the optimization of behavioral, biobehavioral, and social-structural interventions. The objective of MOST is to improve intervention effectiveness, efficiency, economy, and scalability. She is currently collaborating on research applying MOST in the areas of smoking cessation, the prevention of excessive drinking and risky sex in college students, and HIV services.

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      • Kate Guastaferro, PhD, MPH
        Kate Guastaferro, PhD, MPH

        Kate Guastaferro, PhD, MPH

        Kate Guastaferro, PhD, MPH

        Penn State College of Health and Human Development

        Kate Guastaferro, Ph.D. is an Assistant Research Professor in the Center for Healthy Children, and an affiliate of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network as well as the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, at The Pennsylvania State University. Kate’s program of research sits at the intersection of prevention science and innovative methods.

        Kate is committed to the prevention of child maltreatment. Her focus during her time at Penn State has focused predominantly on the prevention of child sexual abuse. Kate led the development of a parent-focused child sexual abuse prevention module designed to be added to existing evidence-based programs. She also collaborates with Dr. Jennie Noll on the implementation and evaluation of a state-wide child sexual abuse prevention strategy.

        She is also interested in innovative methods for intervention development, optimization, and evaluation. She is an expert in the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST), an engineering inspired framework for building interventions that are effective, efficient, economical, and scalable. Kate has experience applying MOST to a variety of public health problems, including STI prevention among first year college students.

        Kate received her PhD in Public Health from Georgia State University in 2016, receiving the Public Health Achievement Award recognizing her scholarship and academic success. She completed her undergraduate work at Boston University in 2008 and received her MPH from Georgia State in 2011. Kate’s vision is to integrate her substantive and methodological interests to develop, optimize, evaluate, and disseminate child maltreatment prevention programs that are effective, efficient, economical, and scalable.

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      • Drew Sayer, PhD
        Drew Sayer, PhD

        Drew Sayer, PhD

        Drew Sayer, PhD

        The University of Alabama at Birmingham

        Dr. Sayer is Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His clinical research relies heavily on the Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) Framework and, in particular, the Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trial (SMART) experimental approach. Using these approaches, Dr. Sayer is conducting 3 ongoing SMARTs with an overarching goal of developing effective, efficient, and personalized adaptive treatment strategies for improving the health and wellbeing of people with obesity.

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      • Rachel Wells, PhD, MSN, RN, CNL
        Rachel Wells, PhD, MSN, RN, CNL

        Rachel Wells, PhD, MSN, RN, CNL

        Rachel Wells, PhD, MSN, RN, CNL

        University of Alabama at Birmingham

        Dr. Rachel Wells is a NIH/NINR-funded (1K99NR019854) postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing. She received a BS in Microbiology, English, and Latin/Greek (2006) from the University of Alabama and MSN (2010) and PhD (2019) in Nursing from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She has an extensive clinical background in critical care and adult cardiovascular health.

        Dr. Wells’ cardiovascular nursing practice, experiences in seeking specialty care as a rural dweller, and research experiences as a palliative nurse coordinator inspire her research interest in optimizing early palliative care models for under-resourced advanced heart failure patients and their family caregivers in the rural Deep South. She is interested in improving cardiovascular outcomes and pain management disparities and access to care for those living with advanced heart failure and other serious illness through innovative behavioral intervention development.

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  • For more information, please contact Amber Ganoe
    aganoe@uabmc.edu