News and Announcements
Read the latest news from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s Center for Health Services & Outcomes Research. The links below take you to articles where you can learn more about our members' latest achievements, awards and honors.
ILPQC Hosts Annual Virtual Face-To-Face Meetings06.23.2020The Illinois Perinatal Quality Collaborative (ILPQC), a project in partnership between CHSOR and NorthShore University HealthSystem with Lurie Children’s Hospital and St. Louis University, held overwhelmingly successful obstetric (mother-focused) and neonatal (newborn-focused) face-to-face virtual meetings over May 20-21, 2020. Over 300 and 250 doctors, nurses and health professionals were in attendance at the obstetric and neonatal meetings respectively.
Both meetings, keynoted by Jessica Brumley, CNM, PhD and Marty McCaffery, MD, CAPT USN (Ret), presented to and reached the over 100 Illinois-based hospitals with the shared goal of improving maternal and infant outcomes.
A Sampling of Breakout Session Content:
- Preparing for Sustainability
- Optimize Narcan Counseling & Access
- Immediate Postpartum LARC (IPLARC): Sustainability & Billing
- Improving Postpartum Access to Care (IPAC): Sustainability & Billing
- Data Collection Strategies
- Unpacking the Toolkit / Getting Started
- Obstetrics Chair / Obstetrics Leadership Breakout
- State & Community Partner Breakout
More about the mission of ILPQC:
ILPQC works with more than 95% of Illinois birthing hospitals (covering 99% of births), and all neonatal intensive care units to provide the following to hospital teams led by physician and nurse champions:
- Collaborative learning opportunities including monthly webinars and twice yearly face-to-face learning between hospital teams, quality improvement (QI) experts, and patients and families to share success stories and best practices.
- Custom data resources and reports to track their progress on quality improvement goals and see where they excel and can improve on key measures to improve health outcomes.
- Technical assistance through QI support calls, key players meetings, grand rounds presentations, and toolkits for using the latest evidence to improve maternal and child health.
Elisa Gordon Appointed to ACBTSA Advisory Committee03.25.2020Elisa Gordon, PhD, MPH was appointed to the Advisory Committee on Blood and Tissue Safety and Availability (ACBTSA) in March 2020. The ACBTSA is a 31-member federal advisory committee that provides advice to the Secretary of Health and Human Services through the Assistant Secretary for Health on a range of policy issues related to blood, blood products, and tissues.
Charlesnika Evans Receives Research Career Scientist Award03.24.2020Congratulations to Charlesnika Evans, PhD, MPH for receiving a Research Career Scientist (RCS) Award from the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA)/Health Services and Research Development (HSR&D).
RCS awards are for established, non-clinician, independent investigators and initially provide up to five years of funding. This designation is awarded after competitive peer review to established, independent investigators who have distinguished themselves through scientific achievements and contributions to the VA research program such as training, mentoring early career stage VA scientists (clinician and non-clinician), functioning as a resource for the research community, serving on VA research or other local or national committees, collaborating with VA clinician scientists,directing a VA core facility or other professional contributions.
Career Scientists represent a very exclusive group within the HSR&D and we hope you'll join us in congratulating Dr. Evans.- Elisa Gordon Receives Award from DOD03.10.2020
Elisa Gordon, PhD, MPH received an award from the Department of Defense as the Principal Investigator for her study, “Ethical Factors Impacting Patients Decisions to Pursue VCA” in September 2019. In this study, Dr. Gordon and her collaborators at Johns Hopkins University and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center are examining the decision-making and informed consent processes of people with upper limb amputations about upper limb transplantation, and developing an educational website to help the public and wounded warriors make informed treatment decisions about regaining upper limb functioning through upper limb transplantation.
02.11.2019Elisa Gordon, PhD, MPH, is featured in the spotlight on the Northwestern Medicine Hispanic Transplant Program. Read the Northwestern Medicine Magazine article. 
02.04.2019Second-year student Salem Argaw’s research found that the Trump Administration’s Public Charge Rule would pose harm on immigrants in Cook County. Her findings helped persuade a federal judge in Chicago to issue a temporary injunction to stop the rule. 
01.17.2019Megan Colleen McHugh, PhD leads the center's efforts in Manufacturing and Health research, aiming to generate evidence to improve the health of manufacturing employees and communities, and reduce health care costs for companies. Read more about this grant on the Policies for Action website. 
11.05.2018Minimally invasive hysterectomy results in worse overall survival outcomes for cancer patients than traditional open surgery, according to a new study.
10.15.2018A Northwestern Medicine study has demonstrated that an age-related increase in estrogen may be the culprit behind a common hernia in elderly men.
08.09.2018A large national study shows electively inducing labor at 39 weeks actually reduces the rate of cesarean deliveries and decreases maternal and fetal complications.
08.07.2018Pediatric patients with sepsis who completed a series of treatments within one hour of sepsis recognition had better outcomes when compared to patients who didn’t complete treatments in the same time frame, according to a multi-center study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, co-authored by Elizabeth Alpern, MD. 
03.08.2018Karl Bilimoria, MD, ’08 MS, ’10 GME, the John B. Murphy Professor of Surgery and director of the Northwestern Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement Center (SOQIC), has been elected president of the Association for Academic Surgery. 
02.28.2018A Northwestern Medicine study found women in surgical residencies work more hours and experience greater rates of burnout compared to their male peers.