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Jennifer Elston Lafata

Professor and Executive Vice Chair, Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy, UNC-Chapel Hill

PhD

Professor and Executive Vice Chair, Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy, UNC-Chapel Hill

Jennifer Elston Lafata, PhD is a health services researcher who works with health systems to implement population health strategies, including those in primary and oncology care settings. She has developed informatics infrastructures to identify and risk stratify clinical populations and developed and evaluated patient- and clinician-targeted interventions to improve evidence-based cancer screening, medication use, and other service receipt. Much of her research is focused on how patient-clinician communication and decision-making effects clinical care quality. Her current research is focused on identifying chemotherapy patients at risk of avoidable emergency department usage, characterizing opportunities to improve the medication counseling provided to patients prescribed oral chemotherapy, scrutinizing the follow-up monitoring received by patients with an abnormal, chest computed tomography, and implementing shared decision making for lung and colorectal cancer screening. She previously co-directed the Cancer Research Network Scholars Program and currently provides coaching support to clinicians participating in UNC’s Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Scholars Program. She collaborates with other LCCC members including Drs. Jason Akulian, Alison Brenner, Allison Lazard, Benyam Muluneh, Patricia Rivera, Hanna Sanoff, and Dan Reuland. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening, long walks, and spending time with her family at soccer games and engineering competitions.

Quality of Cancer Care Delivery

Clinical Informatics

Implementation Science