Practical Scientific Methods for Improving Health and Heath Care

HPM 506 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Despite rapid advances in science and translational research, there are enormous gaps between what we know (the evidence from research) and the effectiveness of prevention and care services we provide. Improvement in health and health care outcomes has been agonizingly slow, but increasing global evidence and experience suggest that progress can be accelerated through a scientific approach to quality improvement. The purpose of this on-line course is to provide you with practical, yet rigorous methods and tools for tackling problems and getting results in public health and health care, or, in fact, for achieving credible results in any field where gaps between “knowing and doing” exist.

This course uses engaging videos, personal improvement projects, and interactive assignments to teach the fundamentals of improvement science. We will emphasize a flexible and practical methodology, The Model for Improvement, but will crosswalk this model with other approaches you are likely to encounter, including implementation science, Lean, and Six Sigma. In addition, we will explore how methods from other scientific disciplines can accelerate improvement, especially epidemiology, qualitative and ethnographic methods, program design and evaluation, information and data science (including AI), and behavioral sciences and behavioral economics. You will practice what you learn by designing, implementing, and evaluating your personal improvement project. Course faculty will offer tips on performing rigorous, publishable projects as part of routine work (including how to differentiate between quality improvement and research that requires approval from institutional human studies review boards). You will practice what you have learned by critiquing published quality improvement studies, including successful and unsuccessful efforts to scale-up promising improvement ideas. We will encourage discussion of the intersection between improvement initiatives and global equity and social justice issues. The instructor and the teaching fellow will provide real-time feedback through Canvas.