Rosa directs Q&I’s program of partnered pragmatic research to improve care for older adults. Over the past 20 years, she has developed and refined a pragmatic approach that combines rigorous methods and evaluation with the flexibility necessary to implement interventions under the real-world conditions and constraints faced by healthcare providers. This includes co-designing the Readiness Assessment for Pragmatic Trials model to strengthen researchers’ engagement of partners and preparation for trials. Her expertise and approach grew from her training at Brown and 14 years engaging Rhode Island providers in quality improvement and measurement while working at a community non-profit. In addition to directing Q&I, her research interests center on characterizing the contextual factors that influence barriers and facilitators to implementation.

Ann is a skilled project director who develops Q&I strategic partnerships and collaborates with faculty to engage healthcare providers in our program of partnered pragmatic research. She engages providers as partners to ensure their perspectives inform the conduct and design of our studies. She has particular interest in identifying and employing effective strategies to collaborate with partners and direct studies, as well as communicating research findings broadly to providers, project managers, and lay audiences.

Vince is an internationally-known post-acute and long-term care researcher whose interests center on the organizational and healthcare delivery system factors associated with variation in the use of services and the outcomes experienced by older adults. He was one of the authors of the nursing center Minimum Data Set resident assessment and is the architect of the national longitudinal dataset that enables Q&I teams to efficiently evaluate interventions. Vince’s expertise contributed significantly to AHCA leaders’ selection of Brown as the site for our center. Most recently, he has served as MPI of the IMPACT Collaboratory, Q&I’s $79M research incubator to fund and support non-drug dementia pragmatic trials. In its first five years, IMPACT made 91 pilot and scholar awards across five funding mechanisms.

Giff directs the American Health Care Association quality department while pioneering initiatives on quality improvement in post-acute and long-term care. He collaborates closely with Rosa, Vince, and other members of the Q&I team to ensure that research projects and methods align with provider needs and are feasible in provider environments.