Maria Britto, MD, MPH
The long-term goal of Dr. Britto’s research program is to improve the quality of health care and health outcomes for adolescents living with chronic conditions. She pursues this goal though a series of studies that include measure development, interventions and descriptive epidemiology. Since 2006, she has directed the Center for Innovation in Chronic Disease (see Clinical Quality Improvement on page 24), which provides a forum for collaboration among investigators from multiple disciplines, and departments who are interested in chronic disease. She has three current projects that have developed from the work of the Innovation Lab within the Chronic Disease Center. These projects are partnerships with consumer goods and technology companies.
- Understanding everyday life in adolescents with asthma in order to improve self-management support: A mixed method study to design and test a segmentation tool to tailor self management interventions
- Pilot Study of the Usage, Usability, and Acceptability of a Web Calendar to Text System for Adolescents with Asthma: An intervention trial of adolescent controlled text messaging to increase medication adherence
- Investigation of the experiences of teens and parents managing asthma at home: A qualitative study to inform the design of electronic tools to reduce hassles of caring for asthma at home.
In addition to these projects undertaken with the Innovation Lab, Dr. Britto is completing a multi-component evaluation of CCHMC’s web-based patient portals for families with chronic conditions. A CCHMC Outcomes Grant funds this work. In December 2008, she will begin work on a new NHLBI funded multi-center study to develop inpatient quality of care measures for pediatric respiratory conditions. Dr. Britto is the site PI for this project, which is led by Dr. Rita Mangione-Smith at the University of Washington.
Dr. Britto is also collaborating with other investigators on related projects. These include a multi-component intervention to improve adherence in adolescents with asthma (NHLBI Seid, PI); a study of quality of life in patients with Juvenile arthritis (NIAMS, Seid, PI); a multi-component project to improve STD results notification in the ED (CCHMC outcomes grant; Huppert PI) and a project to improve transition and primary care for adolescents and young adults with sickle cell disease (MCHB, Webb PI). Finally, she serves as mentor and collaborator on the K awards of three CCMHC/UC junior faculty members (Yi, Cotton, Vargus-Adams).
