Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion

Profile

Armando Rotondi, PhD is an Associate Professor of Health Systems Engineering and Health Services Research at the University of Pittsburgh, Center for Behavioral Health and Smart Technology. He is also a Research Health Scientist in the VISN 4 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC) and the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP) at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System (VAPHS).

Dr. Rotondi has been a pioneer in the field of creating e-health interventions and using them to provide treatments and supportive services directly to those with chronic illnesses, including those with depression and anxiety disorders, severe mental illness, special cognitive needs, traumatic brain injury, as well as their family members. This research program has involved using evidence-based practices as a foundation upon which to build novel e-health interventions that can adapt to individual user needs. This work has a focus on facilitating social connectedness, community self-management, and improving well-being, as well as designing methods that facilitate engagement of users with digital interventions. To accomplish these, Dr. Rotondi has employed a variety of technologies including personal computers, smart phones, Health Buddy^©, websites, mobile phone apps, text messaging, interactive voice response systems (IVR), and land-line phones. These technology-based interventions are designed to improve the ease of receipt, adaptability, convenience, and personalization of resources for education, treatment, communications with providers, self-monitoring, self-management, peer support, and recovery.

His research has included federally funded projects to develop web-based treatment for returning Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) Veterans with complicated mild traumatic brain injury and their family members; a web-based intervention to deliver multi-family psychoeducational therapy to community dwelling persons with schizophrenia and their family members; and creation of guidelines for designing digital interventions for persons with special cognitive needs, such as those with severe mental illness and others with cognitive impairments.