Dr. Cara Nikolajski is the Director of Research Design and Implementation at the UPMC Center for High-Value Health Care (the Center), a nonprofit research organization embedded in the UPMC Insurance Services Division. The Center engages members/patients, clinicians, payers, and other health care staff from across UPMC’s integrated delivery and finance system, along with researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and other academic institutions across the country, to design and implement initiatives that provide innovative solutions to U.S. health care challenges. In addition to implementing its $35 million extramurally-funded research portfolio, the Center provides collaborative learning opportunities for multiple health care stakeholders and trains and mentors the next generation of researchers via health services and pharmacy research fellowship opportunities.
Dr. Nikolajski has led the scientific development and execution of several Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) comparative effectiveness trials focusing on topics including the management of multiple chronic conditions, behavioral and physical healthcare integration, specialty medical homes, and shared decision making. She is actively involved in supporting the scaling of important PCORI findings to improve outcomes for other vulnerable populations within the UPMC Insurance Services Division and beyond. For example, she led efforts to obtain funding to use the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s learning collaborative model to disseminate behavioral health homes across multiple care delivery settings, including opioid treatment providers and youth behavioral health residential treatment facilities. Further, Dr. Nikolajski has over a decade of qualitative research experience and is well versed in qualitative design, data collection, and thematic analysis in the context of clinical trials, program evaluation, and quality improvement initiatives. She utilizes this skillset to train and support Center fellows and UPMC Insurance Services Division stakeholders, employees, and members in the conduct of health services research. She is a graduate from the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences doctoral program at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health where she continues to lecture on the conduct of qualitative research methods and educate on health services system-level, patient-centered research.