Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion

Profile

Kirstin Manges Piazza, PhD, MSHP, RN, is a nurse scientist, CHERP Core Investigator, and VA HSR&D Career Development Awardee.

Dr. Piazza received her PhD from the University of Iowa with a focus on mixed methods research, organizational behavior, patient outcomes, and care transitions. During her doctoral studies she worked as a nurse in a range of clinical settings and completed a pre-doctoral fellowship as a VA National Quality Scholar (2014-2016) with the Center for Access & Delivery Research and Evaluation (CADRE) at the Iowa VA Medical Center.

Dr. Piazza also completed her health services research post-doctoral fellowship as a VA National Clinician Scholar (2018-2021) at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received a Master of Science in Health Policy Research. Through her research, Dr. Piazza seeks to develop and evaluate interventions that align care with older Veteran priorities and values - so that both practice and policy reflect best evidence.

Dr. Piazza's HSR&D Career Development Award (CDA) is titled: Aligning Post-Acute Care with Veterans Values and Priorities. Her research uses mixed methods approaches to reveal insights into what matters most to older Veterans discharged to post-acute care and seeks to understand how best to align care with their values and goals. This effort aims to help Veterans, clinicians, and policy makers better understand the tradeoffs in outcomes between post-acute care settings, while also developing a tool to support high quality post-acute care decision making.

News of Note

• The study, VA Nursing Home Compare Metrics as an Indicator of Skilled Nursing Facility Quality for Veterans, was published in the June 9, 2022, issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Authors include Kirstin A. Manges Piazza, Elina Medvedeva, Mary Ersek, and Robert E. Burke.

Funded Research

• Career Development Award Aligning Post-Acute Care with Veterans Values and Priorities (CDA 21-116)