Putting scholarship into action

Through IHPI’s Clinician Scholars Program (CSP), physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, social workers, and other health professionals come together for an immersive two-year research and leadership training experience focused on putting scholarship into action. Scholars’ research spans a range of interests, including critical illness survivorship, disparities in organ transplantation, and vaccine hesitancy.

In June 2022, seven scholars from the 2020-22 cohort completed the CSP. Nine Clinician Scholars in the 2021-23 cohort are mid-way through their training, while the 2022-24 cohort of six scholars began their program in July 2022. In the first year of the program, most Clinician Scholars earn a Master’s degree in Health and Health Care Research, which is also available as a one-year program to clinician researchers outside the CSP. In 2022, six individuals earned this degree, while seven are currently enrolled in the Master’s program.

Partnering for early career faculty development

For a fourth year, IHPI has partnered with peer healthcare research institutes at the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Pennsylvania to support early career faculty development through the Emerging Scholars Exchange Program. IHPI’s 2022 Scholars were Geoffrey Hoffman, Ph.D., M.P.H., and Elham Mahmoudi, Ph.D., M.B.A., M.S. View their presentations.

Also in 2022, through a generous philanthropic gift, IHPI launched the Sandy-Hassmiller Early Career Health Services Research Award, designed to provide seed funding for IHPI early career faculty members to help catalyze new research. The inaugural winners were Debbie Chen, M.D., for "Real-World Use of Systemic Therapies for Patients with Advanced Thyroid Cancer," and Olivia Killeen, M.D., for "Improving Pediatric Primary Care Vision Screening to Decrease Avoidable Blindness."

Growing online learning

Enrollment in the “Understanding and Improving the U.S. Healthcare System” U-M residential online course has steadily increased over the past five years. To date, 3,360 U-M students, faculty, and staff have participated in the program, including 354 in the 2021 fall term, representing 12 U-M schools and colleges. The "Impacting the Opioid Crisis Massive Open Online Course” has experienced similar growth in participation.

Helping future clinicians on the path of excellence

The U-M Medical School’s Health Policy Path of Excellence and Economics (PoE) prepares students to think broadly about how their work as future clinicians fits within the larger framework of healthcare delivery and the policies that shape it. During the 2021-22 academic year, 66 students were enrolled in the Health Policy and Economics Path, and 14 graduates completed the program in spring of 2022. Since its launch in 2015, nearly 130 students have participated in this path, and six IHPI members have served as lead faculty advisors. Dozens of other IHPI faculty also support other Medical School Paths of Excellence, including Ethics, Global Health and Disparities, Patient Safety/Quality Improvement, Medical Humanities, and Scholarship of Learning and Teaching.

Pairing students and faculty for summer research experiences

These are just a few of the projects launched through IHPI’s 2022 Interdisciplinary Health Services Research Student Fellowship & Internship Program, which pairs graduate students with faculty from different academic departments for a 10-week interdisciplinary research experience:

• How family care resources affect paid and unpaid care services used by individuals with dementia. 
• The impact of geography on abortion care access in Michigan.
• Pediatric critical care resources in the COVID-era. 

Twenty-two students participated in the summer 2022 program, which has hosted 123 student participants since its launch in 2017.

Early career faculty “roadmap”

Established in 2016, IHPI’s Early Career Faculty Advisory Council (ECFAC) includes early career faculty members from multiple U-M schools, colleges, and health services-related disciplines. The ECFAC advises IHPI leadership on how to best leverage its resources to promote the success of its early career faculty, who comprise over one-third of IHPI’s membership. In collaboration with the Medical School’s Office of Faculty Affairs and Faculty Development, members of IHPI’s ECFAC and IHPI staff recently developed an Early Career Faculty Career Development “Roadmap” tool to help early career faculty gain a better understanding of their career development trajectory, with key career development dimensions and milestones to help faculty build their professional path, guide discussions with mentors, track and adjust progress, and access institutional resources available to them throughout their professional development and career planning. Pilot testing for the Roadmap began in fall 2021, and was the focus of the fifth-annual Early Career Faculty Development Workshop in early 2022.

Supporting research and career development

Through mentoring, coaching, and constructive feedback, IHPI supports faculty who are preparing proposals for health services research funding from a variety of sources. Career development awards, commonly known as K awards, are designed to support intensive research training over several years to prepare early career faculty for independent research careers. In early 2022, eight senior faculty mentors provided guidance to 13 IHPI early career mentees on their proposal drafts in the Institute’s K Writing Workshop, held in collaboration with the Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research (MICHR).

Meanwhile, from September 2021 through May 2022, 12 IHPI members served as reviewers and provided critiques of four early career faculty members’ K award proposals as part of the Center for Healthcare Outcomes & Policy’s K Mock Study Section program, which is designed to simulate an actual proposal review session by federal funding decision-makers.

R01 awards are highly competitive and provide funding support for up to five years for defined research projects, which can help establish independent research careers. In 2021-22, two senior faculty coaches mentored eight early career faculty members in IHPI’s R01 Boot Camp Program, held in conjunction with the Medical School’s Mentored Research Academy: R01 Boot Camp, to develop their R01 grant proposals. In addition, 20 early and mid-career faculty members participated in the 2021 IHPI Transition to First R01 Workshop (presented by three IHPI members experienced in writing R01 proposals), in which a total of 61 IHPI member faculty have participated since the workshop launched three years ago.

To assist IHPI faculty members with individualized proposal-writing support, IHPI’s Grant Development Services team provides a comprehensive array of services. In FY22, the team provided editorial and other support for 49 different research projects.