Events
Group Health Research Institute (GHRI) hosts regular seminars where investigators from the Institute and our collaborating institutions present their research findings.
Upcoming seminars | Past seminars
Upcoming scientific seminars and events
There are no GHRI scientific seminars scheduled for June. Details for GHRI July seminars are forthcoming.
Past seminars and events
Thurs., May 16, 2013
“Fatal breast cancer risk in relation to use of unopposed estrogen and combined hormone therapy.”
Gaia Pocobelli, PhD
NRSA Institutional Research Training (T-32) Fellow, Group Health Research Institute
Abstract: Findings from meta-analyses of epidemiologic studies and a Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) randomized trial leave little doubt that use of combined hormone therapy (CHT) is associated with an increased risk of developing breast cancer. Less clear is to what degree, if at all, the increase in incidence translates into an increase in breast cancer mortality. Although the prevalence of use of hormone therapy has declined dramatically since the early 2000s, millions of women in the U.S. alone currently take unopposed estrogen hormone therapy (EHT) and CHT, which are effective at managing adverse symptoms of menopause. We conducted a large population-based nested case-control study in Saskatchewan, Canada, where a population-based prescription drug database has existed since 1975. Individual women’s records were linked across various population-based databases in addition to the prescription drug database, including the population registry, hospital and physician services databases, cancer registry, and the Screening Program for Breast Cancer database. In this seminar I will report our findings on fatal breast cancer risk in relation to recency and duration of use of CHT and EHT.
The “Topics in Women's Health Seminar and Discussion Series” is sponsored by Group Health Research Institute NRSA Institutional Research Training Grant (T32): “Health Care Improvement for Aging Women.”
Weds., May 15, 2013
2013 Cha Chi Ming Lecture
University of Washington School of Medicine “Acupuncture for low back pain: What’s the evidence?”
Karen Sherman, PhD, MPH
GHRI Senior Investigator
Tues., May 14, 2013
“How should we study induction of labor? Methodological issues and associations with maternal and infant outcomes in California.”
Blair G. Darney, PhD, MPH
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Dept. of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology; Dept. of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Oregon Health & Science University
Abstract: Induction of labor is common but its impact on maternal and infant health outcomes is not clear. It remains difficult to synthesize the existing literature about the impacts of elective induction of labor on maternal and infant health outcomes. Studies use different approaches to defining indication without medical indication (elective induction), comparison groups, data sources, and focus on different gestational ages or outcomes. The lack of transparent, reproducible methods to classify inductions as medically indicated or not and to define appropriate comparison groups is a key contributor to the evidence gap about the health impacts of elective induction. This presentation will provide clinical and policy background on induction of labor, describe the key methods issues that complicate studying induction of labor, and present a case study analysis. Our analysis focuses on induction of labor without medical indication and expectant management at each term gestational week (37-40) in California. We use a transparent method to classify inductions as non-medically indicated and use the clinically relevant comparison group, expectant management. We stratify by gestational age and parity and test the association of induction without a medical indication and cesarean delivery (CD), operative vaginal delivery, 3rd or 4th degree perineal lacerations, macrosomia, and perinatal death.
Thurs., April 25, 2013
14th Annual Hilde and Bill Birnbaum Endowed Lecture and Panel Discussion
Tues., April 23, 2013
“The placebo effect in randomized controlled trials (RCT): What is it? How can RCT designs address it?”
Katherine M. Newton, PhD
GHRI Associate Director for Research and External Affairs and Senior Investigator
Abstract: Where did the notion of placebo controlled trials arise? What is the placebo effect? What does a placebo control for? What is the value of placebo controls in randomized trials? What is the origin of the attention control group? What factors should be considered in choosing a control group? This seminar will address these and other issues related to the placebo effect in randomized clinical trials.
Tues., April 9, 2013
“Assessing emerging depression treatments: Describing the cat before it’s out of the bag.” Gregory Simon, MD, MPH
GHRI Senior Investigator and Group Health Psychiatrist
Robert Penfold, PhD
GHRI Assistant Investigator
Abstract: Effectiveness or pragmatic trials are often touted as the solution to the health care cost crisis: a rigorous method to evaluate whether newer (and more expensive) treatments actually deliver greater value. Experience to date, however, suggests that such trials cannot provide useful answers in time to guide practice or policy. Alternative methods are needed for rapidly assessing the effectiveness of emerging treatments or practices. This presentation will describe the promise and challenges of a surveillance system focused on early assessment of treatment effectiveness.
Tues., March 26, 2013
“Systems approaches to leverage colorectal cancer screening adherence and follow-up.”
Beverly Green, MD, MPH
GHRI Affiliate Investigator and Group Health Family Physician
Tues., March 12, 2013
“Heterogeneity in action: The role of passive personalization in comparative effectiveness research.”
Anirban Basu, PhD
Associate Professor, Departments of Health Services and Economics, University of Washington; Director, Program in Health Economics and Outcomes Methodology
Abstract: Despite the goal of comparative effectiveness research (CER) to inform patient-centered care, most studies fail to account for the patient-centeredness of care that already exist in practice, which we denote as passive personalization (PP). Since CER studies describe the average effectiveness of treatments rather than heterogeneity in how individual patients respond to therapies, clinical or coverage policies that respond to CER results may undermine PP in clinical practice and generate worse outcomes. We study this phenomenon empirically in the context of use of antipsychotic drugs in Medicaid patients with schizophrenia using novel instrumental variable methods. We find strong support for PP in clinical practice and demonstrate that the average effects from a CER study cannot be replicated in practice due to the presence of PP. In contrast, providing physicians with evidence to further personalize treatment can produce significant benefits.
Tues., Feb. 26, 2013
“Interpretable patient-level predictive models.”
Tyler McCormick, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Washington
Abstract: This talk presents statistical methods which generate patent-level predictions that are both accurate and highly interpretable to healthcare providers and patients. In this context, an interpretable model should be able to pinpoint exactly why a particular prediction was made, and provide the reason in a clear and natural way. The talk begins by introducing the Hierarchal Association Rule Model (HARM) which sequentially predicts a patient's possible future medical conditions given the patient's current and past history of reported conditions. The core of our technique is a Bayesian hierarchical model for selecting predictive association rules (such as “dyspepsia and epigastric pain imply heartburn”) from a large set of candidate rules. We next present a model for traditional classification problems based on decision lists, which consist of a series of if...then... statements (for example, if high blood pressure, then stroke). Decision lists discretize the high-dimensional, multivariate feature space into a series of simple, readily interpretable decision statements. Our Bayesian framework, known as the Bayesian List Machine (BLM), introduces a formal relationship between sparsity and interpretability through a prior structure over lists. We compare our model with the CHADS2 score, actively used in clinical practice for estimating the risk of stroke in patients that have atrial fibrillation. Our model is as interpretable as CHADS2, but more accurate. This is collaborative work with Cynthia Rudin, PhD; Ben Letham; and David Madigan, PhD.
Weds., Feb. 6, 2013
Town Hall Seattle, “A Skeptic’s Take on the ‘All-Natural’ Approach,” featuring This American Life commentator Nate Johnson. Moderator: GHRI Senior Investigator Dan Cherkin, PhD.
Fri., Jan. 11, 2013
Collaboratory Grand Rounds Webinar, “The Health Care Systems Interactions Core.” Eric B. Larson, MD, MPH, GHRI Executive Director and Group Health Vice President for Research
Tues., Jan. 8, 2013
“The MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation: Current activities and future plans.”
Michael Parchman, MD, MPH
MacColl Center Director and Senior Investigator, Group Health Research Institute
Tues., Dec. 11, 2012
“Accounting for bias in medication safety studies that use electronic healthcare data.”
Sascha Dublin, MD, PhD
Assistant Investigator, Group Health Research Institute
Primary Care Physician, Group Health
Fri., Dec. 7, 2012
“A conversation with David Meltzer, MD, PhD.”
David Meltzer, MD, PhD
General Internist and Health Economist, University of Chicago
Dr. Meltzer is an international thought leader in ways to improve the organization of health care. Join him and GHRI faculty including Eric B. Larson, MD, MPH; Rob Penfold, PhD; David Arterburn, MD, MPH; and Paul Fishman, PhD, to discuss Group Health’s influential research in health services and economics.
Wed.,
Oct. 31–Thurs., Nov. 1, 2012
National Summit on Opioid Safety
Strategies and tools for more cautious use of chronic opioid therapy. Hosted by Group Health Cooperative.
Tues., Oct. 23, 2012
4-5 p.m., Room 1509A, Metropolitan Park East
“Healthcare predictive analytics and computational modeling.”
Eugene Kolker, PhD
Chief Data Officer, Seattle Children's Hospital; Head, Bioinformatics and High-throughput Analysis Lab, Seattle Seattle Children's Research Institute
Topics in Women's Health Seminar and Discussion
Tues., Oct. 23, 2012
“Contributions of psychosocial, environmental, and policy variables on meeting physical activity recommendations in working women.”
Nancy Gell, PhD
NRSA Institutional Research Training (T-32) Fellow, Group Health Research Institute
Abstract: Findings from a case control study of employed women assessed through accelerometry, GPS tracking, and questionnaires. The purpose was to identify potential psychosocial, perceived worksite policy, and environmental factors that facilitate adherence to regular and sufficient physical activity.
The “Topics in Women's Health Seminar and Discussion Series” is sponsored by Group Health Research Institute NRSA Institutional Research Training Grant (T32): “Health Care Improvement for Aging Women.”
Mon., Sept. 24, 2012
“Using electronic medical records (Clarity) for research.”
Abstract: Several GHRI programmers will share what they learned in recent intensive training at Epic headquarters about using Clarity data from electronic medical records to enhance research. This seminar is intended for a broad audience. Technical expertise not required.
Fri., Sept. 28, 2012
(Rescheduled from Tues., June 26, 2012)
1-2 p.m., 1509A, Metropolitan Park East
“Enhancing safety in adult spinal deformity surgery: The Group Health Neurosurgery team approach to clinical research and collaboration.”
Rajiv Sethi, MD
Group Health Neurosurgery
Abstract:The Group Health Neurosurgery team has worked in conjunction with Virginia Mason Medical Center over the past 5 years to standardize protocols in complex spine surgery. This has led to significant improvements in the care of these patients and decreasing complication rates. This model is becoming popular nationwide and Dr. Sethi has presented this work at national and international conferences as an invited speaker. He also has a Partnership for Innovation Grant that is looking further into outcomes and complication reduction. This talk will highlight the collaborative work and the research efforts of the team.
Thurs., Sept. 6, 2012
“Intersection of patient complexity and provider continuity.”
Matt Maciejewski, PhD
Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Duke University Medical Center; Research Career Scientist, Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care, Durham VA Medical Center; Adjunct Professor, Schools of Public Health and Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Abstract: Care continuity is considered a critical characteristic of high-performing health systems and is a purported strength of PCMHs and ACOs. For complex patients who often have multiple providers and complex medication regimens, the continuity of medication management is a particularly important aspect of care continuity. Numerous prior studies have found that adverse health and economic events increase with the number of conditions, but few studies have examined how these outcomes vary by the number of prescribers. Based on a sample of veterans with 1-4 cardiometabolic conditions (diabetes, HTN, dyslipidemia, CHF), Dr. Maciejewski will present analyses that examine the relative predictive power of the number of prescribers and the number of conditions in explaining variation in medication adherence, ER visits, and hospital admissions.
Topics in Women's Health Seminar and Discussion
Thurs., Aug. 30, 2012
“Comparative effectiveness methods to evaluate pharmacogenomic technology in aging populations: Current applications and future directions.”
Joshua Roth, PhD
The “Topics in Women's Health Seminar and Discussion Series” is sponsored by Group Health Research Institute NRSA Institutional Research Training Grant (T32): “Health Care Improvement for Aging Women.”
Thurs., Aug. 23, 2012
“Lessons learned from a program of research: Translation to practice.”
Ruth McCorkle, PhD, FAAN
Florence S. Wald Professor of Nursing, School of Nursing, Yale University
Abstract: In this seminar, Dr. McCorkle identified the lessons learned in building a program of research; discussed how to build a clinical problem into a program of research; discussed the process of team building; described how an infrastructure can facilitate or hinder research; and develop strategies for translating research to practice.
Tues., Aug. 7, 2012
“How to strategically use concepts of innovation diffusion to accelerate the spread of evidence-based practices, programs, and policies.”
James W. Dearing, PhD
Senior Scientist, Institute for Health Research and Co-director, Center for Health Dissemination and Implementation Research, Kaiser Permanente Colorado
Director, Cancer Communication Research Center
Tues., July 10, 2012
“Advancing healthy aging research: A relational perspective.”
Miruna Petrescu-Prahova, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Statistics, Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, University of Washington
Abstract: The population of adults aged 65 or older in the U.S. is projected to reach around 71 million in the next 20 years. This increase will place unprecedented demands on the provision of health care and aging-related services. Research has shown that practicing healthy behaviors and taking advantage of clinical preventive services can mitigate the effect of aging on health. However, much healthy aging research focuses only on individuals, thus ignoring the rich social context in which individuals make decisions about their health. In this talk Dr. Petrescu-Prahova will give an overview of social network analysis as a theoretical framework as well as a methodological tool that can be used to inform healthy aging research at the individual, institutional, and community level.
Tues., May 22, 2012
“Improving primary care treatment of adolescent depression.”
Laura P. Richardson, MD
Adolescent Medicine Specialist, Seattle Children's Hospital; Associate Professor of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine
Scientific seminars are held at the Metropolitan Park East Building (MPE), 1730 Minor Avenue, in Seattle. For directions to GHRI and contact information see our Contact Us page.