Grants Awarded

A 1-year, $192,376 grant from Sanofi Pasteur. Major goals: This is a phase 3, randomized, modified double-blind, 2-arm trial to evaluate the immunogenicity and safety of a high-dose inactivated influenza vaccine compared with a standard-dose inactivated influenza vaccine in participants 50 through 64 years of age. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Lisa Jackson.

Evaluation of Commercial Mammography-Based Artificial Intelligence Algorithms for Breast Cancer Risk Prediction in U.S. Screening Populations

A 5-year, $ 1,216,917 grant from the National Cancer Institute. Major goals: The goals are twofold:

• To compare performance of commercial mammography-based artificial intelligence algorithms to traditional clinical risk models for 5-year breast cancer risk and advanced cancer risk across diverse U.S. breast cancer screening populations
• To project the long-term impact of using these models to identify women eligible for high-risk screening

The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Ellen O'Meara.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Healthy Communities  Evaluation Cycle 2

A 2-year, $999,921 grant from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Major goals: The goals of this project are to address the challenges of quickly bringing on an external evaluator for new RWJF Healthy Communities (HC) projects by expediting the process via utilizing the Center for Community Health and Evaluation (CCHE) as a standby evaluator that can assist in conducting emergent evaluation projects and provide ongoing learning and evaluation assistance to the HC theme and its grantees. As a standby emergent evaluator, we will provide a variety of supportive capacity extension abilities including, but not limited to, traditional evaluation support, request for proposal (RFP) development, data sense-making, learning activities, literature reviews, etc. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Maggie Jones.

Scientist-in-Residence: Kaiser Permanente Center for Gun Violence Research 2024

A 1-year, $75,000 grant from Kaiser Program Office Community Benefit. Major goals: The Scientist-in-Residence is an award designed to support 2 distinct but related work streams focused on supporting:

1. Local and cross-regional Kaiser Permanente care delivery improvements supporting firearm harm prevention evidence-based recommendations and clinical practices
2. Health care system research designed to advance the science of firearm harm prevention

The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Julie Richards.

A 1-year, $20,000 grant from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Major goals: To identify the impact of economic burden of serious illness on patient well-being and patient-defined goals. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Marlaine Figueroa Gray.

Public Health Institute – California Overdose Prevention Network (PHI-COPN) Evaluation 2024-27

A 4-year, $128,000 grant from the California Department of Health Care Services. Major goals: To evaluate the implementation and outcomes associated with the California Overdose Prevention Network. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Maggie Jones.

The Opioid Cohort Consortium (OPICO) to Investigate the Effects of Using Opioids on Cancer Risk

A 5-year, $419,920 grant from the National Cancer Institute. Major goals: To understand the relationship between prescription opioids and cancer risk. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Karen Wernli.

A 5-year, $293,396 grant from Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Major goals: The major goals of this project are to conduct a pragmatic randomized controlled trial to compare the effects of proactive care (involving mailed materials and phone calls) relative to usual care for: (1) increasing participation in SilverSneakers exercise programs (primary aim), (2) improving physical, social, and psychological outcomes identified as important to patients, and (3) reducing osteoarthritis-related health service use in older adults with osteoarthritis. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Dori Rosenberg. 

Patient-Centered Team-Based Primary Care to Treat Opioid Use Disorder, Depression, and Other Conditions

A 1-year, $1,100,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Major goals: The major goal is to be able to complete the MI-CARE trial, which was greatly impacted by COVID-19. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Katharine Bradley.

A 4-year, $334,563 grant from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Major goals: The main aim of this study is to validate the FDA’s COVID-19 disease severity definitions from the COVID natural history protocol using medical record review. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Gaia Pocobelli.

Effectiveness of Teen Suicide Prevention with Confidential Care: An Implementation Study Across 30 Primary Care Clinics

A 3-year, $1,938,672 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Major goals: For teens 13 to 17 years old with preventive visits, our aims are to:
 

1. Test the extent to which implementation of teen suicide prevention increased suicide risk screening, acute suicide risk assessment, and safety planning, as well as teen report of suicide risk, by comparing 3 years of usual care to 3 years of full implementation. 
2. Test whether implementation of teen suicide prevention reduced major adverse psychiatric events in the 6 months after a preventive visit by comparing 3 years of usual care to 3 years of full implementation.
3. Test whether confidential care was associated with increased teen report of suicide risk and engagement in safety planning in the 3 years after full implementation, both overall and for higher-risk teens.

The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Gwen Lapham.

Identifying and Addressing Bias in Depression and Anxiety Quality Measures

A 3-year, $3,391,349 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Major goals: The major goals are to use data from 4 health systems to identify and address racial, ethnic, and other biases in measures of care quality for depression and anxiety. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Gregory Simon.

A 1-year, $ 683,198 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Major goals: To conduct an implementation study across 30 primary care clinics on the effectiveness of teen suicide prevention with confidential care. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Gwen Lapham.

CommonSpirit Community Health Worker Pilot

A 1-year, $50,000 grant from CommonSpirit Health. Major goals: The major goal of this project is to support 6 CommonSpirit health sites with a community health worker pilot evaluation design, including creating a logic model, evaluation plan, and metrics for success, and providing general technical assistance. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Maggie Jones.

Community Vital Signs: An Integrated Community-Based Approach to Identify Undiagnosed Hypertension in Nigeria

A 1-year, $27,677 grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Major goals: To use community collaborations with faith-based centers and electronic communications to improve hypertension control in Nigeria. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Beverly Green.

Machine Learning to Personalize Antidepressant Treatment

A 3-year, $2,392,868 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services. Major goals: We will use longitudinal records data from 4 health systems to test specific hypotheses regarding consistency of response to antidepressant medications and derive new rules to personalize antidepressant treatment. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Gregory Simon.

A 1-year, $34,406 grant from Cedars-Sinai. Major goals: The major goal of this project is to provide feasibility data on digital mammogram capture for an upcoming grant submission. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Erin Bowles.

Formative Evaluation of the Integration of Brief Opioid Use Disorder Assessment into HIV Prevention and Treatment in Prisons

A 2-year, $91,054 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Major goals: The major goal of this project is to understand the perspectives of Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) stakeholders on opioid use disorder (OUD) identification in patients with and without HIV and to work with DOC leadership to integrate evidence-based OUD assessment into the DOC’s HIV treatment and prevention programs. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Leah Hamilton.

Leveraging Deep Learning to Classify Sitting Posture and Measure Sedentary Patterns from Accelerometer Data in Diverse Cohorts

A 4-year, $36,633 grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Major goals: The major goals of this project are to build upon the previously developed CNN Hip Accelerometer Posture (CHAP) model — a novel deep learning convolution neural network (CNN) bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) model. CHAP classifies posture (sitting versus not sitting) using hip-worn accelerometers and predicted postural transitions with high accuracy. Here we aim to test CHAP’s performance in diverse cohorts, develop transfer learning approaches for CHAP to minimize the need for retraining, expand CHAP data intake capacity into both older and wrist-worn accelerometer technology, and apply CHAP in larger cohorts for epidemiological evidence. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Mikael Anne Greenwood-Hickman.

A 1-year, $40,000 grant from the Kaiser Permanente Program Office. Major goals: The major goal of the Benefits Data Trust (BDT) evaluation project is to study the value, utilization, and impact of BDT for Kaiser Permanente’s Maryland members’ social health needs. The Center for Community Health and Evaluation will use a mixed-methods approach and synthesize the findings into a series of recommendations related to outbound national campaigns. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Melissa Trapp Petty.

Clinical Breast Cancer Risk Prediction Models for Women with a High-Risk Benign Breast Diagnosis

A 5-year, $800,165 grant from the National Cancer Institute. Major goals: The proposed study will develop and validate breast cancer risk prediction models for women with a high-risk benign breast diagnosis. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Ellen O'Meara.​​​​​​​ 

National Cancer Institute Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP): Clinical Trials

A 1-year, $30,456 grant from the National Cancer Institute. Major goals: The major goals of this project are to conduct oncology clinical trials. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Eric Chen.​​​​​​​

Kaiser Permanente Research Bank: Return of Results Pilot

A 1-year, $70,238 grant from the Kaiser Permanente Program Office. Major goals: The major goal of this project is to explore biobank participant and clinical stakeholder perspectives on equitably returning genetic results to biobank participants. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Nora Henrikson.​​​​​​​ 

Amplify Peer

A 1-year, $15,000 grant from the KPWHRI Small Grants Program. Major goals: The major goal of this project is to complete preparation-phase activities to inform the optimization of a peer support intervention for youth mental health. Key activities include (1) identifying critical targets of peer support interventions for youth mental health and (2) synthesizing the current literature to identify candidate peer support intervention components that can address those critical targets. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Rosemary Meza.​​​​​​​ 

Self-Harm Event Calculation

A 1-year, $14,981 grant from the KPWHRI Small Grants Program. Major goals: The major goal of this project is to create and validate a natural language processing pipeline that differentiates initial emergency department (ED) visits for self-harm from follow-up ED visits for self-harm. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is David Cronkite.

A 4-year, $2,661,200 grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Major goals: The major goals of this project are to compare the effectiveness and safety of metabolic/bariatric surgery and GLP-1 and SGLT-2 medications for patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is David Arterburn.

Multifactorial Breast Cancer Risk Prediction Accounting for Ethnic and Tumor Diversity

A 1-year, $80,621 grant from the National Cancer Institute. Major goals: The major goal of this project is to develop and validate a comprehensive breast cancer risk assessment tool. The tool will predict risk overall and by subtype across major ethnic groups in the United States. We will also prospectively validate the model in different clinical settings. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Ellen O'Meara.

Use Case Package 1: Empirical Application of the Sentinel EHR and Claims Data Partner Network to Address ARIA Insufficient Inferential Requests

A 1-year, $374,498 grant from the Food and Drug Administration. Major goals: The major goals are to assess the feasibility of developing computable phenotypes for 20 to 30 health outcomes that have been challenging to study using administrative claims data in the Active Risk Identification and Analysis (ARIA) system, employing more advanced methods such as natural language processing or incorporating richer data from electronic health records (EHRs). The project will also contribute to a protocol and analyses using real-world linked claims and EHR data to study drug-disease associations that were deemed too challenging to study using claims data alone. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Sascha Dublin.

Use Case Package 2: Empirical Application of the Sentinel EHR and Claims Development Network to Enhance ARIA Sufficient Inferential Requests and Atypical Descriptive Requests

A 1-year, $393,087 grant from the Food and Drug Administration. Major goals: The major goal of this project is to develop an empirical case study for the Sentinel Innovation Center. We will identify an appropriate ARIA sufficient case study and apply subset calibration tools for correcting claims-only analyses for potential unmeasured confounding using data gathered from electronic health records.  The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Susan Shortreed.

A 2-year, $234,427 grant from California Health Care Foundation. Major goals: The major goals of this project are to conduct an evaluation of the EQuIP-LA program to help all partners better understand the successes and limitations of the program and assess and document the experiences of participants. This includes assessing program impact and participants’ progress, elevating facilitators and barriers, and evaluating perceptions and utilization of program supports. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Lisa Schafer.

Comparative Effectiveness of Anti-Obesity Medications for Cardiometabolic Health Outcomes and Health Services Use

A 5-year, $402,929 grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Major goals: The major goals of this project are (1) to address critical questions on the long-term efficacy and safety of anti-obesity medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration and (2) to assess hard clinical outcomes of these drugs (for example, incident diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular events) and their impact on health care use and costs. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is David Arterburn.

Identifying Optimal Antibiotic Regimens to Treat Urinary Tract Infections During Pregnancy — Supplement

A 1-year, $58,832 grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Major goals: The major goals of this project are to characterize differences in the incidence and treatment of urinary tract infection in pregnancy by race and ethnicity, including differences in choice of antibiotic and concordance of treatment with clinical guidelines; and to support Sandra McAteer, a master’s student in epidemiology at the University of Washington, in conducting research and gaining skills and experience needed for a successful career in maternal and child health interventions. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Sascha Dublin.

A 2-year, $239,769 grant from the California Health Care Foundation. Major goals: To understand the Hazel Health telemental health implementation in schools. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Natasha Arora.

Free From Market — United Healthcare Pilot Evaluation

A 1-year, $50,000 grant from Free From Market. Major goals: To evaluate a pilot program to provide access to Free From Market (a virtual food pantry) to high-risk pregnant people in Kansas who are experiencing food insecurity. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Elena Kuo.

Incorporate Frequently Used Engineered Features from Electronic Health Records (EHRs) into the Sentinel Common Data Model in the Sentinel EHR and Claims Linked Data Partner Network (FE5)

A 1-year, $200,000 grant from the Food and Drug Administration. Major goals: To derive health care risk factors such as smoking status and history of suicide attempt from clinical free text using natural language processing. The newly generated features will populate a new table in the FDA Sentinel common data model. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Robert Penfold.

Washington Learning Health System Embedded Scientist Training and Research Center (WA LHS E-STAR Center)

A 5-year, $4,999,458 grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Major goals: The major goal of the Washington Learning Health System (LHS) E-STAR Center is to train a diverse set of independent scientists with a solid foundation in LHS research who can change the paradigm of primary care research through research that rapidly develops and implements evidence while simultaneously building LHS capacity in safety net primary care settings. The Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute lead investigator is Paula Lozano.