Senior Investigator Paula Lozano, MD, MPH, is a pediatrician and medical director for research and translation at the Washington Permanente Medical Group. She also co-directs the Center for Accelerating Care Transformation (ACT Center) at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI). Dr. Lozano’s work focuses on helping Kaiser Permanente Washington succeed as a learning health system, where research informs practice and practice informs research.

“The challenges facing health care are so complex,” she says. “The learning health system seems like the best way to deliver on our promise to provide the highest quality, patient-centered, effective, and affordable care to Kaiser Permanente Washington members.”

Dr. Lozano founded Kaiser Permanente Washington’s Learning Health System (LHS) Program in 2017 and continues to lead the organization’s learning health system work through the ACT Center. Established in 2021, the ACT Center brought the LHS Program together with the MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation to help health systems nationwide accelerate care transformation and achieve lasting, equitable improvements in care delivery.

The ACT Center’s learning health system work represents Kaiser Permanente Washington’s investment in the use of rigorous evidence and research methods ─ in partnership with frontline clinicians, leaders and patients ─ to promote a culture of continuous learning. Deploying the advanced scientific methods available at KPWHRI, the ACT Center helps Kaiser Permanente Washington improve health, make care more affordable, and provide a good patient experience. Dr. Lozano leads two projects in this portfolio — Integrated Pain Management and Care Management for Chronic Pain — both aimed at promoting opioid safety and whole-person pain care.

As co-director of the CATALyST Learning Health Systems Scholars K12 Training Program, funded by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), Dr. Lozano trains and mentors multidisciplinary junior faculty at KPWHRI, the University of Washington (UW), and Veterans Affairs (VA).

Dr. Lozano's other research interests have included health behavior-change, obesity, self-management of chronic conditions, and health disparities. She is collaborating with KPWHRI Senior Investigator David Arterburn, MD, MPH, on Moving to Health, a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded project that is examining the relationships between neighborhood food and physical activity characteristics and development obesity. Dr. Lozano’s work has focused on improving health care quality through changing the delivery system, supporting clinical decision-making by providers, and supporting patients and parents in health behavior change. She has also served as an investigator for several U.S. Preventive Services Task Force evidence reviews conducted by the Kaiser Permanente Research Affiliates Evidence-based Practice Center.

Dr. Lozano practiced general pediatrics at Harborview Medical Center and Seattle Children's Hospital while on the faculty at the UW Department of Pediatrics, where she taught residents and medical students. She also served as director of the UW Primary Care Research Fellowship, funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), to provide research training in the primary care disciplines of internal medicine, family medicine, and pediatrics. She is an adjunct professor of health systems and population health at the UW School of Public Health.