Health Services Research (Success in Academic Surgery)

This updated volume provides insight into health services research, as well as the emerging areas of research and the tools required to perform scientific work. The book covers topics related to performance assessment, quality improvement, health care policy, and career development. New chapters on the evaluation of non-technical skills in surgery, methods of enhancing causal inference in observational studies, and writing scientific manuscripts are also included.

Health Services Research aims to give advice on how to obtain National Institutes of Health funding and other grants, as well as breaking through the barriers to developing a career in academic surgery. This book is relevant to surgical residents and young surgical faculty, as well as anyone undertaking a career in academic surgery.

Justin Dimick, MD, MPH is a Past President of the Association for Academic Surgery (AAS). Dr. Dimick is the Frederick A. Coller Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Michigan. He completed surgical residency at the University of Michigan and a fellowship in health services research at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. Dr. Dimick has an active externally funded health services research program and, prior to becoming a department chair, served as Director of the Center for Healthcare Outcomes & Policy at the University of Michigan. His research program is supported by R01 grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and National Institutes of Health. The goals of his research are to evaluate the effectiveness of different strategies for improving outcomes and reducing costs of surgical care. He has more than 300 peer-reviewed publications, including papers in The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Health Affairs, and Health Services Research.

Carrie C. Lubitz, MD, MPH is the Recorder of the Association for Academic Surgery (AAS)  She received her undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Michigan. She completed general surgery training at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill-Cornell Medical College. She then completed her clinical endocrine surgery fellowship in 2010 at the Massachusetts General Hospital, obtained a Master of Public Health through the Harvard School of Public Health and completed a two-research fellowship in the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Program in Cancer Outcomes Research Training. She is now an Associate Professor of Surgery at the Harvard Medical School and a senior scientist at the MGH Institute for Technology Assessment. In addition to her endocrine surgery practice, Dr. Lubitz has clinical and translational research interests including comparative-effectiveness research aimed to improve the quality of care of patients with thyroid cancer and other endocrine-related disorders. She is currently supported by the NIH/NCI for her research.