Research
My research grew out of a simple question: why do some people get good pain care and others don't?
At Johns Hopkins, I study what happens between recommending an evidence-based treatment and a patient actually receiving enough of it to benefit. I look at how referral pathways, treatment delivery, health system workflows, digital tools, and clinical measurement shape who starts care, who stays engaged, and how clinicians respond to the information patients provide.
My goal is to make evidence-based pain and rehabilitation care easier to reach, easier to use, and more responsive to the people it is meant to help.
Research Focus
We have effective treatments for chronic pain, including psychological, behavioral, rehabilitative, and medical care. Yet many people who could benefit never start them, begin only after long delays, or stop before receiving a meaningful treatment dose.
My research asks where that process breaks down, why it happens, and what can be done to improve it.
Some barriers are structural, including insurance design, neighborhood conditions, transportation, and the availability of rehabilitation services. Others arise inside health systems through referral processes, scheduling, clinical workflows, and the way care is documented. Treatment can also fall short when patients don't see a recommended option as feasible or worthwhile, or when clinicians collect useful information but don't have the tools or support to interpret and act on it.
I approach these questions through three connected areas of work.
The first is health services and care pathway research. I use electronic health records, national datasets, geospatial methods, and other population-based data to study who receives evidence-based pain and rehabilitation care, where patients fall out of the treatment pathway, and how health system and community factors shape treatment use.
The second is patient-centered measurement and decision science. I study how treatment engagement should be measured, how patients weigh treatment options, and how patient-reported outcomes and other clinical data can better support real clinical decisions. This work includes developing more accurate ways to measure referral, treatment initiation, rehabilitation engagement, and care delivery using routine electronic health record data.
The third is intervention and implementation research. I develop and test strategies to help patients begin and stay engaged in evidence-based care, while also studying what clinicians and health systems need to successfully deliver those strategies in routine practice.
Across these projects, I'm interested in the same underlying question. How can patients, clinicians, and health systems better translate evidence into care that people can actually use?
The Lab
As Co-Director of the Hopkins Pain & Rehabilitation Lab, I work alongside Dr. Rachel Aaron and our team of postdoctoral fellows, research assistants, and trainees to advance this research agenda.