Promoting Equity via Change In Practice for Respiratory Failure
Investigative Team
PRECIPICE brings together a unique, multidisciplinary team of investigators. The study is led by Drs. Mari Armstrong-Hough and Thomas Valley, and is supported by an experienced, focused team of co-investigators
Mari
Armstrong-Hough
Co-Principal Investigator
Mari Armstrong-Hough is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences and in the Department of Epidemiology at NYU School of Global Public Health. She is a medical sociologist and epidemiologist of respiratory disease. Armstrong-Hough’s global health research examines the interfaces among tuberculosis (TB), HIV, and non-communicable diseases. Combining training in epidemiology and sociology, she develops and evaluates interventions to increase early case-finding, status awareness, and linkage to care for TB and HIV in high-burden settings like Uganda and South Africa. Her US-based research examines disparities in survival of respiratory failure and seeks to develop interventions to ensure that all patients with respiratory failure receive evidence-based care.
Thomas
Valley
Co-Principal Investigator
Thomas Valley is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Michigan. Dr. Valley’s research focuses on improving clinician and organizational decision-making in the intensive care unit. Dr. Valley’s research helps clinicians identify patients most likely to benefit from intensive care, allowing clinicians to safely triage patients between the ICU and the general ward. At the organizational level, Dr. Valley seeks to ensure all critically ill patients receive best practices in ICU care, particularly in rural communities.
Catherine
"Terri" Hough
Co-Investigator
Dr. Catherine L. “Terri” Hough grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and UCSF. She trained in internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, returning west to train in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Washington, where she also served as Chief Medical Resident at Harborview Medical Center. She remained at UW for 21 years, building a research program focused on understanding and improving outcomes during and after critical illness and injury. She moved to OHSU to become division chief in July 2020.
Theodore
"Jack" Iwashyna
Co-Investigator
Theodore “Jack” Iwashyna is a Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. He is a practicing medical intensivist, who has focused his work on understanding how to help patients and their loved ones health after critical illness—particularly taking a holistic view of healing.
Stephanie
Cook
Co-Investigator
Dr. Cook is an assistant professor in the departments of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Biostatistics at New York University School of Public Health. She is also the Director of the Attachment and Health Disparities Research Lab (AHDL). Dr. Stephanie Cook’s overarching research focus is to understand how structural- and individual-level minority stressors contribute to mental health, physical health, and health behaviors across the life span. Further, she seeks to understand how features of close relationships can exacerbate or buffer the negative effects of minority stress on health. Her work primarily focuses on young adults transitioning to adulthood who are at the intersection of racial/ethnic and sexual orientation status. In addition, much of her current work examines the links between minority stress (i.e., daily experiences of discrimination) and biological markers of stress and disease (e.g., cortisol and c-reactive protein).
Adolfo
Cuevas
Co-Investigator
Adolfo G. Cuevas, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at NYU’s School of Global Public Health and core faculty at the Center for Anti-racism, Social Justice, & Public Health. As a community psychologist, he employs epidemiological, psychological, and biological approaches to investigate the effects of discrimination and other psychosocial determinants on health and health inequities. He uses a wide range of population-level datasets and advanced statistical methods to establish a plausible understanding of how psychosocial determinants “get under the skin” to increase the risk of aging-related diseases.
Ana
Abraído-Lanza
Co-Investigator
Dr. Abraído-Lanza is Vice Dean and Professor of Social Work at the Columbia University School of Social Work. She is a scientist cross-trained in the social sciences and public health. A major focus of her research is on analyzing the disparities between non-Latino whites and Latinos in the US, and exploring key cultural, social, and individual factors that promote health. Her work examines the mechanisms contributing to Latino health disparities, including disparities in access and quality of care.
Luz
Mercado
Program Manager
Luz Mercado is a program manager at New York University in the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences. She received her MPH in Epidemiology with a concentration in Public Health Research Methods from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Luz is interested in addressing racial/ethnic health disparities, food security, and immigrant health through mixed-methods, community-based participatory research and intervention design.
Amanda
Schutz
Program Manager
Amanda Schutz is a research specialist in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Michigan. She earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Arizona in 2019, where she used qualitative methods to explore identity development and organizational belonging among stigmatized populations. Since joining PCCM, she has contributed to health services research on decision making in the ICU, physician perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic response, and best practices in rural intensive care.
Courtney
Maxcy
Program Manager
Courtney completed her studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Master’s degree in Public Health in 2018 and has a combined 14 years of research experience. She is experienced in health services, clinical, and qualitative research, study coordination, writing, editing, and program management.
Max Monahan
Program Manager
Max Monahan is a Sr. Research Program Manager at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has a background in public health and social work, with a specific interest in research regulation and compliance. His work over the last several years has focused on operationalizing long-term outcomes health services research.
Katie
Parrotte
Graduate Research Assistant
Katie is a 1st year PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology within NYU's School of Global Public Health. She is working as a research assistant in the AIRE Lab on PRECIPICE (Promoting Equity via Change In Practice for Respiratory Failure), which looks to address health disparities between Hispanic and non-Hispanic patients who survive respiratory failure. Katie comes to research from a clinical background, having worked as a licensed physical therapist, through which she gained an interest in addressing health disparities and equitable access to healthcare.
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Anushka
Halder
Graduate Research Assistant
Anushka is a multidisciplinary researcher passionate about global health equity. A second-year MPH student in Social and Behavioral Sciences, she intends to draw on her previous training in anthropology and biomedical sciences to bridge the gap between social and medical research, putting into practice the translation of medical science into equitable cost-effective practice in public health. As a PATHE Fellow, Anushka has been working with the AIRE Lab to design an intervention for patients burdened with tuberculosis, diabetes mellitus, and HIV in Uganda. She has been awarded an incentive grant by WHO-Defeat-NCD Partnership (UNITAR) Programme for Implementation Research to Scale-up National NCD and Mental Health-related Responses for Achieving SDG 3.4 to continue this work.
Shirley
Ge
Research Affiliate
Shirley is a Research Affiliate at the NYU School of Global Public Health GPH and a medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Her work has focused on interventions for reducing disparities in critical care settings with PRECIPICE. Other research interests include global health, trauma medicine, and quality improvement. In her free time, she loves taking long walks in Manhattan, trying new restaurants, climbing, and binging TV.
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Blessy
McWan
Research Specialist
Blessy McWan is a research specialist in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Michigan. She earned her PhD in Media and Communication from Bowling Green State University in 2022. She has spent the past few years in research related endeavors, right from the beginning to the completion of research projects. Most of her research focused on understanding communication in social media spaces. Currently, she is interested in addressing communication practices in ICU and related spaces to suggest appropriate practices for better health outcomes.
Roland Thorpe
Roland Thorpe, PhD, Chair, is Professor of Medicine and Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Director of Research on Men’s Health at the Center for Health Disparities Solutions. He is an expert on etiologies of disparities in health outcomes.
Blanca Osorio
Blanca Osorio is a Patient Advocate. She was hospitalized at the U-M Hospital in April 2020 with respiratory failure and was intubated for 11 days. She survived and is recovering with functional limitations.
Marcella Nunez-Smith
Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, is Chair of the U.S. Health Equity Task Force and the Director of the Equity Research and Innovation Center, Associate Dean for Health Equity Research, and Associate Professor at the Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Public Health.
National Advisory Board
The PRECIPICE team is joined by seven members of a National Advisory Board. The board will convene virtually twice yearly to provide input on study design, conduct, interpretation, and intervention development.
Lynne Richardson
Lynne D. Richardson, MD, is Professor of Emergency Medicine and Vice Chair for Academic, Research and Community Programs at Mount Sinai. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee to Reduce and Ultimately Eliminate Health Disparities.
Victor Ray
Victor Ray, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Sociology & African American Studies at the University of Iowa. An organizational sociologist, he studies how race and ethnicity implicitly shape organizational processes.
Iddo Tavory
Iddo Tavory, PhD, is Associate Professor of Sociology at NYU. He is the author of numerous influential books and articles on measuring culture through qualitative and quantitative methods.
Donna Shelley
Donna Shelley, MPH, MD, is Professor of Public Health Policy & Management at NYU School of Global Public Health, Professor of Population Health at NYU School of Medicine, and Director of the Global Center for Implementation Science. She is an expert in intervention design and implementation.