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
Bradley KA, Lapham GT, Lee AK. Screening for drug use in primary care: practical implications of the new USPSTF recommendation. JAMA Intern Med. 2020 Jun 9. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.7335. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Chavez LJ, Bonny AE, Bradley KA, Lapham GT, Cooper J, Miller W, Chisolm DJ. Medication treatment and health care use among adolescents with opioid use disorder in Ohio. J Adolesc Health. 2020 Apr 7. pii: S1054-139X(20)30043-4. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.01.016. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Boudreau DM, Lapham G, Johnson EA, Bobb JF, Matthews AG, McCormack J, Liu D, Samet JH, Campbell CI, Rossom RC, Binswanger IA, Yarborough BJH, Arnsten JH, Cunningham CO, Glass JE, Murphy MT, Zare M, Hechter R, Ahmedani B, Braciszewski JM, Horigian VE, Szapocznik J, Samet JH, Saxon AJ, Schwartz RP, Bradley KA. Documented opioid use disorder and its treatment in primary care patients across six US health systems. J Subst Abuse Treat. 2020 Mar;112S:41-48. doi: 10.1016/j.jsat.2020.02.001. PubMed
Sayre M, Lapham GT, Lee AK, Oliver M, Bobb JF, Caldeiro RM, Bradley KA. Routine Assessment of Symptoms of Substance Use Disorders in Primary Care: Prevalence and Severity of Reported Symptoms. LID - 10.1007/s11606-020-05650-3 [doi] J Gen Intern Med. 2020 Jan 23. pii: 10.1007/s11606-020-05650-3. doi: 10.1007/s11606-020-05650-3 [Epub ahead of print] PubMed
Williams EC, Bobb JF, Lee AK, Ludman EJ, Richards JE, Hawkins EJ, Merrill JO, Saxon AJ, Lapham GT, Matson TE, Caldeiro R, Greenberg DM, Kivlahan DR, Bradley KA. Effect of a care management intervention on 12-month drinking outcomes among patients with and without DSM-IV alcohol dependence at baseline. J Gen Intern Med. 2019 Aug 20. doi: 10.1007/s11606-019-05261-7. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Richards JE, Bobb JF, Lee AK, Lapham GT, Williams EC, Glass JE, Ludman EJ, Achtmeyer C, Caldeiro RM, Oliver M, Bradley KA. Integration of screening, assessment, and treatment for cannabis and other drug use disorders in primary care: an evaluation in three pilot sites. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2019 Aug 1;201:134-141. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2019.04.015. Epub 2019 Jun 8. PubMed
Williams EC, McGinnis KA, Tate JP, Matson TE, Rubinsky AD, Bobb JF, Lapham GT, Edelman EJ, Catz SL, Satre DD, Bryant KJ, Marshall BDL, Kraemer KL, Bensley KM, Richards JE, Skanderson M, Justice AC, Fiellin DA, Bradley KA. HIV disease severity is sensitive to temporal changes in alcohol use: a national study of VA patients with HIV. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2019 Apr 6. doi: 10.1097/QAI.0000000000002049. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
Hechter RC, Horberg MA, Weisner C, Campbell CI, Contreras R, Chen LH, Yarborough BJH, Lapham GT, Haller IV, Ahmedani BK, Binswanger IA, Kline-Simon AH, Satre DD. Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) measures of alcohol and drug treatment initiation and engagement among people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and patients without an HIV diagnosis. Subst Abus. 2019;40(3):302-310. doi: 10.1080/08897077.2019.1580239. Epub 2019 Mar 25. PubMed
Bensley KM, Fortney J, Chan G, Dombrowski JC, Ornelas I, Rubinsky AD, Lapham GT, Glass JE, Williams EC. Differences in receipt of alcohol-related care across rurality among VA patients living with HIV with unhealthy alcohol use. J Rural Health. 2019 Jun;35(3):341-353. doi: 10.1111/jrh.12345. Epub 2019 Jan 31. PubMed
Weisner C, Campbell CI, Altschuler A, Yarborough BJH, Lapham GT, Binswanger IA, Hechter RC, Ahmedani BK, Haller IV, Sterling SA, McCarty D, Satre DD, Kline-Simon AH. Factors associated with Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) alcohol and other drug measure performance in 2014-2015. Subst Abus. 2019 Jan 24:1-11. doi: 10.1080/08897077.2018.1545728. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
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