What is Health Services Research? (HSR)
We Improve Practice, Policy and Patient Outcomes.
HSR is an interdisciplinary field that studies how patient behaviors, social factors, healthcare access and delivery, systems, policy, digital health and technology affect medication use and outcomes.
Researchers Who Pursue HSR Question:
- How do organizational structures and policies affect access to medications and healthcare? And, how can we influence these structures and policies to improve access?
- How do organizational processes or provider decisions affect the quality of medication use and healthcare? And, how can we influence these processes to improve the quality of care?
- How do patient behaviors or environmental structures affect medication and healthcare use? And, how can we encourage positive behaviors to improve outcomes?
- How do financing systems affect the cost of medications and healthcare? And, how can we influence these systems to promote cost-effective care?
- How do health technologies affect health and well-being? And how can we use these technologies to improve health and well-being?
Health Services Research Is One of Two Research Tracks You Can Pursue in the Clinical Pharmacy Translational Science PhD Program.
You might be asking what are some HSR research topics and methods. Let's share a few.
- Outcomes Research
- Medication Use and Adherence
- Personalized Medicine
- Patient- and Family-Centered Care
- Population Health
- Healthcare Delivery and Systems
- Disease Management
- Medical Technologies
- Pharmacy Informatics
- Health Disparities
- Healthcare Policy
- Implementation Science
- Data Science
- Secondary Data Analysis
- Survey Research
- Qualitative Research
- Mixed Methods Research
- Advanced Statistical Techniques
- Artificial Intelligence
- Machine Learning
- Cost-Effectiveness
- Controlled Trials
- Observational Studies
- Development of Interventions
- Implementation of Interventions
- Community Engagement
Our Faculty Are Experts and Eager to Mentor You.
Adults
Devote yourself to improving medication-related outcomes and ensuring safe and effective medication use in vulnerable and older adults. Research in this space focuses on:
- Improving medication use through pharmacist-led reviews and care models.
- Preventing medication-related harm and hospital readmissions.
- Examining the impact of pharmacists’ care on health outcomes.
and Adherence
Focus on social theories to examine how individuals manage medications and how pharmacists in primary care settings influence medication use. Research in this space focuses on:
- Adherence and non-adherence of individuals’ medication(s), including concern and necessity beliefs, and self-reporting adverse effects.
- Quantifying the impact of pharmacists’ care on medication adherence and health outcomes.
High Disease Burden Populations
Utilize user-centered approaches to develop and implement behavioral interventions that:
- Partner with peer support persons to improve diabetes outcomes.
- Target psychosocial and sociocultural factors that hinder medication use behaviors and diabetes.
- Address multi-level barriers to engagement in evidence-based disease self-management programs to enhance implementation and effectiveness.
Explore novel modifications of technology and evidence-based interventions to improve effectiveness in vulnerable populations:
- Collaborative care and patient-specific digital health information.
- Prevent disease complications among patients at community health centers.
in Cardiovascular Disease
Utilize technology to understand and improve the health of patients with cardiovascular diseases. Develop technology for patient management of these diseases.
Medication Safety
Solve medication use and safety challenges by building novel AI tools with systems engineering theories. Evaluate the effectiveness of AI and ML tools on patient, provider, and organizational outcomes.
Is the HSR Track Right For You?
Our prospective students choose this research track within the CPTS PhD program because they often have a research question in mind, whether to focus on a specific disease, a population, or both.
