Shannon H. Houser, PhD, MPH, RHIA, FAHIMA, professor, in the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Health Services Administration, recently received the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) Triumph Influencer Award.
The AHIMA Triumph Awards recognize those who have made a difference across the entire health information profession. She received the award at the AHIMA24 Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, on October 27, 2024.
“With over 103,000 active AHIMA members across the country and worldwide, this recognition is especially meaningful to me,” said Houser. “I am grateful for the support from UAB and the Department of Health Services Administration, which provided a strong foundation for achieving this on the national stage. I am deeply honored to be the 2024 recipient of the AHIMA Triumph Influencer Award, which recognizes my dedication to driving positive change and advancing the knowledge base within the health information profession.”
Houser has been an active member of AHIMA since 1992. She has served on AHIMA’s Research Committee, Education Strategy Committee, Policy Statement Workgroup, Research Requests Taskforce, Graduate Resource Alliance Workgroup, Council for Excellence in Education (GRA/CEE) and the Informatics & Data Analytics Practice Council, and as a Subject Matter Expert in Data Literacy.
Houser has held numerous leadership roles at both the state and national level. She is the immediate past president of the Alabama Association of Health Information Management (AAHIM) and serves as chair of the AHIMA Foundation of Research Network Population Health Workgroup and the AHIMA Data Analytics and Data Use Practice Council. Additionally, she has served on the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Scholarship Committee, the Electronic Health Record Usability Task Force, and the inaugural Social Determinants of Health Committee. She is also the chair of the Health Information Management Faculty Forum for the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA).
This is the third time that Houser has received a national award from the association. In 2021, she was honored with the AHIMA Triumph Mentor Award for a distinguished career of transforming lives and helping others in the industry achieve their best and reach their full potential. She also earned the 2007 AHIMA Triumph Award for Research for her contributions to health information management research, which advanced best practices and improved data integrity within the field.
In addition to teaching in the UAB Graduate Programs in Health Informatics and undergraduate in Healthcare Management, Houser is a senior scientist at the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Science and the Center for AIDS Research, as well as a scholar at the Sparkman Center for Global Health at UAB.
Houser is also an influencer internationally, holding a visiting professor appointment and serving as a doctoral Mentor at Tsinghua University, Institute of Hospital Management, Beijing, China, since 2012.
