Director
Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

In addition to serving as Director of the Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and Education (COERE), Dr. Mugavero serves as Co-Director of the UAB Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and as Associate Director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS). Dr. Mugavero is an NIH, CDC, HRSA, AHRQ, and Foundation-funded investigator who has developed a dynamic health services research program at UAB, centered on engagement in care that has made seminal contributions to HIV prevention and treatment science. Dr. Mugavero serves as PI for the AHRQ T32 UAB Health Services Research Training Program and was a recipient of the 2020 John M. Eisenberg Excellence in Mentorship Award. He has published over 275 articles in peer-reviewed literature and has served as primary mentor for over 20 pre-doctoral students and 10 post-doctoral fellows and/or junior faculty, including current and past T32, TL1, KL2, K12, K23, R34, and R01 awardees from the UAB Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Public Health, and Social Work. Dr. Mugavero was recently named the Jeanne M. Marrazzo, MD, MPH, Endowed Professor in Innovation and Advancement through Mentorship.

Deputy Director
Program Director II, Division of Infectious Diseases
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Madeline is the Deputy Director of the COERE, overseeing all administrative and scientific functions of the Center. She has extensive experience with NIH proposal development, research administration, intramural pilot program management, and the conduct of randomized controlled trials. Her Master of Public Health is in epidemiology..

Co-Director
Professor, Department of Health Services Administration
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Allyson Hall, PhD is a professor in the Department of Health Services Administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where she serves as director of graduate programs in health care quality and safety. Dr. Hall’s research focuses on improving access to high quality health care among vulnerable populations including low-income individuals, and people living with a disability or a chronic health condition. She has a long-standing interest in Medicaid. For over 10 years she has investigated reforms and changes to Florida’s Medicaid program. Current research activities also focus on reducing care fragmentation and the use of health care technology to improve quality of care. Dr. Hall serves on the board of the Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME) and is an Associate Editor for the Journal for Healthcare Quality. She has a PhD in Health Policy from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a MHA in health care administration from the University of Florida.

Director, DIISC
Associate Professor, Department of Health Services
Director, PhD Program, Administration-Health Services
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Larry R. Hearld, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Services Administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Director of the Ph.D. Program in Administration-Health Services. He is currently the co-editor of Health Care Management Review and serves on the editorial board of Medical Care Research and Review. His research focuses on the antecedents and consequences of organizational change in health care, with special emphasis on dissemination and implementation science in health care. He has been a PI and co-I on NIH-, AHRQ-, PCORI-, and foundation-funded studies that examine the dissemination and implementation of quality improvement processes and innovative care delivery models within hospitals, primary care organizations, and local communities. This research utilizes a range of methodological approaches, including effectiveness-implementation hybrid designs, mixed methods, and quasi-experimental designs. He currently teaches courses in research methods, organizational behavior, and dissemination and implementation science.

Director, DRIVEN
Associate Professor, School of Public Health
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Dr. Bertha Hidalgo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Associate Dean of Access and Engagement at the UAB School of Public Health. She holds degrees from Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research focuses on health inequities related to COVID-19 and cardiometabolic diseases, with a particular focus on Latino populations, genomics, and dissemination science. She is passionate about science communication and leads a dissemination science project funded by Research Goes Red and Verily to increase awareness and education about CVD and increase participation in Research Goes Red. She is the principal investigator of an NHLBI-funded R01 to explore the epigenome of women with preeclampsia.

Director, Office of Research Synthesis
Assistant Professor, Department of Health Behavior
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Kathryn Kaiser, Ph.D., earned a B.S. degree in microbiology from Texas A&M University and medical technology from the University of Texas Health Science Center in Dallas. She started her professional career in medical laboratory science (clinical diagnostics) and, for 20 years, worked to train, support, install, and design/develop medical diagnostics instrumentation, data management systems, and sample handling processors. She then received her Ph.D. in Health Psychology from the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth in 2009. She joined the Section on Statistical Genetics at the UAB School of Public Health in June of 2009 as a post-doctoral scholar and was a T32 Trainee in Vascular Biology and Hypertension. Dr. Kaiser is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and has focused on meta-research and race/sex disparities in obesity using human and animal models. She specializes in methods for conducting systematic reviews of scientific literature. More recently, she has broadened her professional networks to collaborate with organizations that support the scholarly communications infrastructure with the aim of speeding discoverability of scientific literature. In addition, she teaches graduate courses for the Health Behavior concentration, including Health Program Evaluation and Psychophysiology. She also teaches a PhD level course on Systematic Review Protocol Development.

Director, GRIT
Professor Emerita, School of Public Health
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Dr. Julia Locher began her career at UAB in 1992 as a Research Associate in the Division of Gerontology, Geriatrics, and Palliative Care. She earned her PhD in Medical Sociology in 1999 and an MSPH in Health Policy and Outcomes in 2005. Rising through the ranks, she became a tenured Associate Professor in 2009 and Full Professor in 2013, before retiring as Professor Emerita in 2016.

A nationally recognized researcher in nutrition and aging, Dr. Locher led multiple NIH-funded studies, including several from the National Institute on Aging, and published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Her work ranged from observational studies to randomized controlled trials focused on older adults’ nutritional health and outcomes.

She has held key leadership roles, including Director of the Public Policy and Aging Program and Associate Director of the UAB Nutrition and Obesity Research Center. Her mentorship and community engagement earned her numerous awards, including the AARP Champion for Change Award, UAB’s Becky Trigg Outstanding Faculty Woman Award, and Fellow status in the Gerontological Society of America.

Dr. Locher is currently devoting her efforts to ensuring the success of junior faculty in securing extramural support by working with the Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and Education on the Grant Writing and Intensive Training (GRIT) initiative.

Program Coordinator
Training Programs Lead

Program Manager
Professional Development Programs Lead

Clinical Research Coordinator III
Learning Health System and D&I Science Lead

Program Director
Facilities, Communications and Event Planning Lead

Associate Director
Assistant Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Ronnie "Matt" Gravett, MD, MSPH is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine. He focuses his research on HIV prevention and the intersection of HIV and STIs among sexual minority persons in the Deep South. Dr. Gravett. At UAB, he completed his clinical fellowship in Infectious Diseases as well as the AHRQ NRSA T32 Postdoctoral fellowship in Health Services, Outcomes, and Effectiveness Research in 2020. His research and educational work focus on improving sexual health outcomes in the Deep South, with a particular focus on HIV prevention among sexual and gender minority persons. His K23 research focuses on PrEP promotional messaging among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men in the Deep South. In addition, he also works to understand participatory methods utilizing crowdsourcing to engage the community through designathons and open calls. He also works in clinical trials exploring new PrEP modalities as well as early-phase HIV vaccine trials. He is an Associate Director for the Center for Outcomes Education and Research Education (COERE), where he leads Gathering to Enrich and Advance Research (GEARs). As a clinician and educator, he leads the 1917 PrEP Clinic at UAB, sees patients living with HIV at 1917 Clinic, and leads the HIV curriculum for the Southeast STD/HIV Prevention Training Center. Recognizing affirmation as a remedy for stigma, he fervently believes and advocates for affirming and inclusive sexual health care for LGBTQ+ persons.

Associate Director
Assistant Professor, School of Public Health
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Kathryn Foti, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology in the UAB School of Public Health. Dr. Foti received her PhD from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in cardiovascular disease epidemiology, where she also completed a post-doctoral fellowship. She received her MPH from the Yale School of Public Health in chronic disease epidemiology. Her research focuses on monitoring and improving the prevention and control of hypertension, and elimination of cardiovascular health disparities. Dr. Foti leads the Statistical Core for the RESTORE Health Equity Research Network to prevent hypertension, funded by the American Heart Association. She is also a co-investigator of multiple hypertension control and sodium reduction projects globally, funded by Resolve to Save Lives. Dr. Foti currently holds a K01 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, through which she also aims to expand her training in mixed methods and implementation science research. Additionally, Dr. Foti has experience conducting secondary data analyses of multiple cardiovascular cohort studies, such as the Jackson Heart Study and REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study, and population-based surveillance studies, such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Previously, Dr. Foti worked for 8 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including 5 years as Special Assistant to the CDC Director.

Associate Director
Associate Professor, Department of Gerontology, Geriatrics and Palliative Care
University of Alabama at Alabama, UAB

Richard Kennedy, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Division of Gerontology, Geriatrics, and Palliative Care at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine. He has been actively involved in aging and outcomes research for over 25 years when he began assisting with drafts of an Outcomes Module for Dementia (OMD) through the nationally-recognized Center for Outcomes Research and Effectiveness at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. He then began a career in delirium research under the mentorship of Paula Trzepacz, MD, an internationally recognized leader in the field. His work focuses on the intersection of medical illness and cognition in aging-related disorders including delirium, Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s disease, and mobility as well as normal cognitive aging. He serves as Associate Director for the Data Core of the UAB Alzheimer's Disease Center and as the primary biostatistician for the UAB Morris K. Udall Parkinson’s Disease Center and Traumatic Brain Injury Model Systems. He is PI on multiple NIH-funded methodological grants for the modeling of Alzheimer's disease clinical trials and for utilizing electronic health record (EHR) data to identify predictors of delirium. He is active in the training of new investigators, having served as a research mentor for more than 20 graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty members spanning the fields of psychiatry, psychology, biostatistics, health behavior, nursing, emergency medicine, and neuroscience. He has also co-directed the Introduction to Biostatistics core class for Graduate Biomedical Sciences for the past 5 years and developed and taught a core curriculum on consultation/liaison psychiatry (including delirium and dementia) for medical students.

Associate Director
Assistant Professor, School of Health Professions
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Seung-Yup “Joshua” Lee, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Services Administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Health Professions. His research integrates artificial intelligence, health services research, and healthcare delivery innovation to improve care transitions, chronic disease management, and health equity, particularly for underserved populations in the Deep South. Dr. Lee’s program of research centers on designing and evaluating AI-guided, patient-oriented intervention models that connect predictive analytics with real-world clinical and community practice. He examines how artificial intelligence can identify patients at high risk for adverse outcomes and how these insights can be translated into timely, coordinated actions across the continuum of care. His work spans several interrelated areas: reducing medication complexity and discrepancies during hospital-to-home transitions; understanding social and behavioral factors that influence treatment outcomes; and advancing compassionate, patient-centered communication in chronic disease and palliative care. He has served as Principal Investigator on multiple projects supported by the UAB Forge AHEAD Center, the Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS), and the Center for Palliative and Supportive Care. Through these initiatives, Dr. Lee aims to generate actionable, system-level, patient-oriented solutions that strengthen collaboration among hospitals, primary care practices, and community health organizations. His long-term goal is to lead an interdisciplinary research program that integrates artificial intelligence, implementation science, and social determinants of health to design equitable, scalable interventions that enhance continuity of care and improve outcomes for chronically ill populations in the Deep South.

Associate Director
Associate Professor, Department of General Internal Medicine & Population Science
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Dr. Gabriel Tajeu received a Doctorate of Public Health in Health Care Organization and Policy with a concentration in outcomes and econometrics research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in hypertension and cardiovascular disease (CVD) epidemiology at UAB. He was a COERE T32 trainee for his doctoral degree. His research focuses on lowering the risk of CVD through appropriate diagnosis and treatment of hypertension. As part of this research, he investigates racial disparities in hypertension and CVD outcomes and quality of care at the population and health systems level. Dr. Tajeu also conducts research into the cost-effectiveness of medications and interventions and has conducted research on antihypertensive medication adherence. Dr. Tajeu utilizes administrative data (i.e., Medicare, American Hospital Association Survey, and Hospital Compare) as well as cohort data (i.e., REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke study, the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, and the Jackson Heart Study) in his research. He has also engaged in the collection of primary data on implicit and explicit racial bias among healthcare workers and participated in the development of an intervention to decrease perceived discrimination and improve patient satisfaction in primary care clinics in Alabama. Most recently, Dr. Tajeu is developing skills in applying machine learning techniques to electronic health record data.

Associate Director
Assistant Professor, School of Nursing
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Dr. Rachel Wells is an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. As a nurse and clinical nurse leader with 15 years of clinical experience in cardiac critical care, palliative care, and rural health, her research bridges the fields of chronic illness care and early palliative care. Specifically, Dr. Wells has focused on the development and testing of highly efficient and effective models of early palliative care for those living with advanced heart failure. Her program of research focuses on the examination of active palliative care intervention elements and dosing of palliative care to develop optimized interventions that uniquely address palliative care needs. She was an AHRQ NRSA T32 Postdoctoral Trainee in Health Services, Outcomes, and Effectiveness Research before receiving a NIH/NINR K99/R00 in 2021. She has been involved with federally-, foundationally-, and intramurally-funded grants as a PI and Co-I focused on intervention development and tailoring and testing and implementation of models of early palliative care for older adults living with serious illness and their family caregivers. Dr. Wells is regularly engaged in the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association, American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, American Heart Association, and American College of Cardiology where she has championed efforts to educate nurses and others to identify, monitor, and intervene early for cardiovascular challenges in underresourced populations.

Steering Committee Member
School of Medicine
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Steering Committee Member
School of Medicine
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Steering Committee Member
College of Arts and Sciences
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Steering Committee Member
School of Health Professions
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Steering Committee Member
School of Medicine
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Steering Committee Member
School of Nursing
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Steering Committee Member
School of Nursing
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Steering Committee Member
School of Medicine
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Steering Committee Member
School of Nursing
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Internal Advisory Committee Member
Professor and Associate Dean, School of Health Professions
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Internal Advisory Committee Member
Associate Director for Basic Research, UAB Heersink School of Medicine
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Internal Advisory Committee Member
Associate Professor and Magic City LGBTQ Health Studies Endowed Associate Professor, School of Public Health
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Internal Advisory Committee Member
Professor, UAB Heersink School of Medicine
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

Internal Advisory Committee Member
Professor, UAB Heersink School of Medicine
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

External Advisory Committee Chair
Chair and Professor, Population and Quantitative Health Sciences
University of Massachusetts

External Advisory Committee Member
Chief Innovation Officer & Senior Vice President, Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network
Vanderbilt University

External Advisory Committee Member
Associate Professor, School of Public Health, Co-Director UC San Diego Dissemination and Implementation Science Centers
University of California San Diego

External Advisory Committee Member
Assistant Professor, Behavioral, Social and Health Education Sciences
Emory University

External Advisory Committee Member
Chair and Professor, Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics
University of Florida

External Advisory Committee Member
Volunteer Faculty, Division of General Internal Medicine and Population Science
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)