Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion

Profile

An experimental social psychologist, Leslie Hausmann, PhD, has devoted her career to improving the health and health care of vulnerable Veteran populations through research and quality improvement. Her primary research interests include understanding how issues of discrimination and bias contribute to health and health care disparities, especially with regards to pain and pain management. However, her research spans the full continuum of health equity research, including epidemiological studies designed to identify health and healthcare disparities, observational studies investigating factors that cause or exacerbate disparities, and studies in which patient, provider, and system-level interventions to reduce disparities are developed and evaluated.

She serves as Core Investigator at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System (VAPHS) Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP) and Associate Professor of Medicine and Clinical and Translational Science, University of Pittsburgh. As Co-Director of the Health Equity Capacity Building Core within CHERP, Dr. Hausmann spearheads the development and dissemination of tools and education to support innovative health equity research and empower those working in the field to conduct equity-focused quality improvement.

Read Dr. Hausmann's article, co-authored by Ernest Moy, MD, Director of the VA Office of Health Equity, and Carolyn Clancy, MD, VA Assistant Under Secretary for Health, Discovery, Education and Affiliate Networks, on "Equity as a Crucial Element of High Reliability Organizations."  

"Health equity is an ideal state in which everyone has the fair and just opportunity to reach their best possible health. Deviations from this state manifest as disparities, that is, systematic failures that result in certain groups receiving poorer care or achieving poorer health than others. Although disparities in US health care quality and safety are well-established, coronavirus disease 2019 underscored their devastating impact on different groups of Americans."

Watch the video "Engaging Healthcare Teams to Eliminate Health Inequities," written by Dr. Hausmann and colleagues at the VA Office of Health Equity.