Co-Director, Graduate Programs
in Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety
Research Assistant Professor, Institute for Healthcare Studies
Feinberg School of Medicine
Northwestern University

Telephone 847-832-9650
Fax          312-503-2777

woods@northwestern.edu

Donna Woods, EdM, PhD is currently Research Assistant Professor at the Institute for Healthcare Studies in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.  Dr. Woods’ research has focused on issues of patient safety particularly pediatric patient safety.  One area of Dr. Woods’ current work is clinician to clinician communication contexts leading to patient safety risk and effective interventions to address these risks in pediatrics.  She is also focused on principles to guide effective pediatric customization of patient safety interventions and safe pediatric medical care design using identified child specific patient safety risk factors.  Her work on pediatric patient safety was selected in two consecutive years for awards for “significant and innovative” health services research.  In her capacity at Northwestern, Dr Woods is a member of the Executive Committee for the Joint Center for Patient Safety and is Associate Director of the University’s new Master’s Program in Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety.  Dr. Woods was just recently awarded, with her collaborator, the 2006 Institute of Medicine – Chicago, CPSF. Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute Recognition in Patient Safety Award.  Dr. Woods serves as a pediatric patient safety expert to advise on the analysis of reports submitted to Florida’s mandatory reporting system.  Dr Woods is a current member of the Chicago Patient Safety Forum and Co-Chair of the Chicago Pediatric Patient Safety Consortium, a consortium of five hospitals with pediatric services seeking to understand generalizable patient safety risks in pediatrics and design solutions that are effectively customized for child specific needs and pediatric medical care.  Dr. Woods is faculty for the American Association of Medical Colleges, Academic Rapid Response Team Learning Collaborative and the Illinois Hospital Association Clinician Communication and Hand-offs Collaborative. 

Dr Woods completed her doctorate in Health and Social Policy at the Brandeis University, Heller School for Social Policy and Management and received a Masters of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Dr. Woods worked as Senior Policy Advisor on Health Care Quality for the state of Massachusetts and led the team to develop a system of quality measurement and improvement for all of the state’s acute-care hospitals.  Dr. Woods served as Chair of the Massachusetts Governor’s Advisory Council’s, Women and Substance Abuse Task Force for seven years. She was also elected National Chair of a federally initiated network of state representatives from all US states and territories to address issues of substance abuse prevention, information, and referral.