Cara C. Lewis, Ph.D., is the Deputy Director of the Center for Translation Research and Implementation Science (CTRIS) at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute within the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Lewis has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology with a research focus on advancing pragmatic and rigorous measures and methods for implementation science and practice and informing tailored approaches to implementing evidence-based interventions. She is an implementation science methodologist who seeks to influence change across a broad field of diseases, settings, and stakeholder groups.
Prior to joining NHLBI, Dr. Lewis was a Senior Investigator at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) in Seattle, Washington. She also served as an Affiliate Faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Medicine and the Department of Health Systems and Population Health in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Psychology from the University of Oregon. She completed her residency at the University of Washington, and then moved into a faculty position at Indiana University’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences before joining KPWHRI.
Dr. Lewis’ expertise in implementation science is evidenced through her national and international responsibilities including serving as President of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration, as co-founding Editor-in-Chief of Implementation Research and Practice, lecturer for implementation science training institutes, scientific advisor domestically and abroad (e.g., centers in Ireland, Australia), and co-editor of Practical Implementation Science. In 2022, Clarivate recognized her as one of the most highly cited social scientists globally.
Dr. Lewis is deeply committed to research, training, mentoring, and building implementation science capacity. She maintained almost a decade of continuous NIH funding (e.g., OPTICC, IMPACT). She has been a driving force in elevating the importance of implementation mechanisms, emphasizing how studying mechanisms of change may improve tailoring, optimizing, and scaling of effective implementation strategies. She has pushed the field to focus on measurement quality to improve the field’s research rigor and generalizability. Her work has led the field in considering nuances of health systems, organizations, and individual change in how evidence-based interventions can be more effectively implemented and sustained to benefit patients and the general public.