Division of Research Overview

The Research Division of the Department of Family Medicine, during 2005-06, submitted 31 research grant proposals for funding involving Research Division faculty as principal investigator or co-investigator. Seventeen grants were funded, six were not funded, and 8 are still pending.  Senior Research Division faculty were also involved in mentoring junior faculty on 12 currently funded grants. Among the newly funded grants, Dr. Davis received a prestigious Amos Faculty Development Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  She will examine obesity development and disparities in women with an emphasis on the roles played by stress and childbearing. As part of a National Cancer Institute Metabolic Research Center Grant, Dr. Li will study competing risks of mortality in elderly patients with prostate cancer; insulin resistance syndrome pathway factors and colon polyps; and the genetic epidemiology of insulin resistance pathway factors and colon cancer.  Drs. Stange and Werner have created a unique National Cancer Institute R25 fellowship-training program designed to aid investigators in developing practice-based research networks and to conduct studies utilizing network practices. Dr. Stange is also a co-investigator of TransforMED; a national demonstration project on the new model of practice espoused in the Future of Family Medicine Report, and sponsored by the American Academy of Family Physicians. Finally, two Title VII department grants were funded to develop research infrastructures. One grant supports the development of a research infrastructure within each of our three residency programs at CWRU. The second supports research infrastructure development within family practices affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

During 2005-06, Division members continued to conduct a broad array of funded research designed to: increase preventive services and improve primary care practice  (Drs. Stange, Flocke, Werner, Zyzanski); discover gene-environment interaction relevant for cancer prevention (Dr. Li); develop and evaluate innovative new technologies for identifying and intervening on familial cancer risk (Dr. Acheson); design research programs to reduce health care disparities in minority patients (Dr. Harris-Haywood), examine self-management practices of patients with diabetes (Dr. Werner) and develop innovative primary care research methods (Drs. Stange, Flocke, Acheson, Werner, Zyzanski). The Research Division faculty published or had accepted for publication 31 papers during the 2005-06 academic year.  Division members published in a wide variety of research journals including: Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Public Health, Medical Care, Preventive Medicine, Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, Psycho-Oncology and in the major primary care research journals.

 Our department continues to be the editorial home office of the Annals of Family Medicine, the highly successful indexed, peer-reviewed primary care research journal that is available online at (www.AnnFamMed.org). Several faculty members (Drs. Stange, Acheson, Zyzanski) and Division members (Ms. Gotler, Ms. McLellan) are active as editors. This research journal is unique in its interactive online format and in its sponsorship. It is sponsored, without commercial support, by all six national family medicine organizations.  The journal, published bimonthly, had more than 370 manuscripts submitted for publication in 2005 and 2006.

 

Division of Research Members:

The Research Division is comprised of the following members: Stephen J. Zyzanski, PhD (Division Director); Kurt Stange, MD, PhD (Family Physician/Epidemiologist); Louise Acheson, MD, MS (Family Physician); Susan Flocke, PhD (Health Services Researcher); Li Li, MD, PhD (Family Physician/Epidemiologist), Esa Davis, MD, MPH (Family Physician), Sonja Haywood, MD, MPH (Family Physician), James Werner, PhD (Network Researcher), Robin Gotler, MA (Research Center Executive Director), Sara Cechner, BA (Administrative Assistant), Ginger Pomiecko, BS (Research Assistant), Laura McLellan, MLS, (Editorial Assistant), Lisa Gordon, BS (Research Assistant), and Willa Eisele (Department Assistant II).