Gwen Lapham, PhD, MPH
"My research focuses on primary care, currently in two areas: understanding cannabis use and integration of mental health services for adolescents."
Gwen Lapham, PhD, MPH, MSW
Assistant Investigator, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute
Assistant Professor, Department of Health Systems Science, Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine
Gwen.T.Lapham@kp.org
206-287-2021
Biography
Gwen Lapham, PhD, MPH, MSW, joined Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) in 2013 as an addictions health services researcher. Since then, she has capitalized on her prior social work and health services training to do impactful research on evidence-based primary care for unhealthy substance use, including alcohol, cannabis, and opioids. She has recently begun making strides in understanding cannabis use among primary care patients, including medical use and use among prenatal women.
Dr. Lapham recently completed the CATALyST K12 Washington Learning Health System Program funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. In the program, she partnered with Kaiser Permanente Washington health system leaders and with KPWHRI’s Center for Accelerating Care Transformation to address gaps in the quality of behavioral health care for children and adolescents by developing and testing an integrated approach to adolescent mental health. She expects this work to lead to new evidence for effective implementation of adolescent mental health integrated in primary care.
She is also a co-investigator of the Primary Care Opioid Use Disorders Treatment, or PROUD trial, a pragmatic implementation trial of nurse care management for treatment of opioid use disorders in primary care, as well as the Health Systems node of the National Institute on Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network. Dr. Lapham’s research projects specific to cannabis include:
- A pilot study about the prevalence of and reasons for cannabis use among pregnant women. This study uses both cannabis screening results from the electronic health record (EHR) and qualitative interviews.
- Site principal investigator for a multisite study that examined patient-level and system-level factors associated with the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set, commonly known as HEDIS, to measure performance for initiation and engagement in treatment for patients with cannabis use disorders.
- Co-principal investigator for a study evaluating EHR documentation of medical use of cannabis. This study employs natural language processing methods to compare EHR data with data from confidential surveys about medical cannabis use.
Prior to working at KPWHRI, Dr. Lapham focused on qualitative and quantitative evaluation of preventive alcohol interventions in medical settings at the Veterans Health Administration in Seattle.
RESEARCH INTERESTS AND EXPERIENCE
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Behavior Change
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Addictions & Unhealthy Substance Use
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Health Services & Economics
Implementation research; quality measurement
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Implementation Research
Screening and brief intervention; mental health quality measurement
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Child & Adolescent Health
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Addictions
Prevention and treatment
Sparc trial tools
Resources for behavioral health integration
The SPARC trial successfully implemented behavioral health care into primary care. On our website, you can access tools for behavioral health integration, as well as frequently asked questions and publications.
Recent publications
Carrell DS, Cronkite DJ, Shea M, Oliver M, Luce C, Matson TE, Bobb JF, Hsu C, Binswanger IA, Browne KC, Saxon AJ, McCormack J, Jelstrom E, Ghitza UE, Campbell CI, Bradley KA, Lapham GT. Clinical documentation of patient-reported medical cannabis use in primary care: toward scalable extraction using natural language processing methods. Subst Abus. 2022;43(1):917-924. doi: 10.1080/08897077.2021.1986767. PubMed
Matson TE, Bradley KA, Lapham GT. Self-reported practices of frontline cannabis dispensary workers and the implications for clinicians. JAMA Netw Open. 2021;4(9):e2125262. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.25262. PubMed
Browne K, Leyva Y, Malte CA, Lapham GT, Tiet QQ. Prevalence of medical and nonmedical cannabis use among veterans in primary care. Psychol Addict Behav. 2021 Aug 26. doi: 10.1037/adb0000725. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Matson TE, Carrell DS, Bobb JF, Cronkite DJ, Oliver MM, Luce C, Ghitza UE, Hsu CW, Campbell CI, Browne KC, Binswanger IA, Saxon AJ, Bradley KA, Lapham GT. Prevalence of medical cannabis use and associated health conditions documented in electronic health records among primary care patients in Washington state. JAMA Netw Open. 2021 May 3;4(5):e219375. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.9375. PubMed
Tsui JI, Akosile MA, Lapham GT, Boudreau DM, Johnson EA, Bobb JF, Binswanger IA, Yarborough BJH, Glass JE, Rossom RC, Murphy MT, Cunningham CO, Arnsten JH, Thakral M, Saxon AJ, Merrill JO, Samet JH, Bart GB, Campbell CI, Loree AM, Silva A, Stotts AL, Ahmedani B, Braciszewski JM, Hechter RC, Northrup TF, Horigian VE, Bradley KA. Prevalence and medication treatment of opioid use disorder among primary care patients with hepatitis C and HIV. J Gen Intern Med. 2021 Feb 10. doi: 10.1007/s11606-020-06389-7. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Campbell CI, Saxon AJ, Boudreau DM, Wartko PD, Bobb JF, Lee AK, Matthews AG, McCormack J, Liu DS, Addis M, Altschuler A, Samet JH, LaBelle CT, Arnsten J, Caldeiro RM, Borst DT, Stotts AL, Braciszewski JM, Szapocznik J, Bart G, Schwartz RP, McNeely J, Liebschutz JM, Tsui JI, Merrill JO, Glass JE, Lapham GT, Murphy SM, Weinstein ZM, Yarborough BJH, Bradley KA. PRimary Care Opioid Use Disorders treatment (PROUD) trial protocol: a pragmatic, cluster-randomized implementation trial in primary care for opioid use disorder treatment. Addict Sci Clin Pract. 2021;16(1):9. doi: 10.1186/s13722-021-00218-w. PubMed
McClure JB, Lapham G. Tobacco quitline engagement and outcomes among primary care patients reporting use of tobacco or dual tobacco and cannabis: an observational study. Subst Abus. 2020 Dec 3:1-6. doi: 10.1080/08897077.2020.1846665. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Yeung K, Richards J, Goemer E, Lozano P, Lapham G, Williams E, Glass J, Lee A, Achtmeyer C, Caldeiro R, Parrish R, Bradley K. Costs of using evidence-based implementation strategies for behavioral health integration in a large primary care system. Health Serv Res. 2020 Dec;55(6):913-923. doi: 10.1111/1475-6773.13592. PubMed
Matson TE, Lapham GT, Bobb JF, Johnson E, Richards JE, Lee AK, Bradley KA, Glass JE. Cannabis use, other drug use, and risk of subsequent acute care in primary care patients. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2020 Aug 8;216:108227. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2020.108227. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Williams EC, McGinnis KA, Rubinsky AD, Matson TE, Bobb JF, Lapham GT, Edelman EJ, Satre DD, Catz SL, Richards JE, Bryant KJ, Marshall BDL, Kraemer KL, Crystal S, Gordon AJ, Skanderson M, Fiellin DA, Justice AC, Bradley KA. Alcohol use and antiretroviral adherence among patients living with HIV: is change in alcohol use associated with change in adherence? AIDS Behav. 2021 Jan;25(1):203-214. doi: 10.1007/s10461-020-02950-x. PubMed
Research
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Is medical use of cannabis as risky as nonmedical use?
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KPWHRI in the media
Frequency of cannabis use disorder in a state with legal use
Cannabis use disorder is common in one state where marijuana is legal
CNN, Aug. 29, 2023
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