Research Highlights
Fulbright Scholar Award Received by Dr. John Piette John Piette, PhD, Professor of Internal Medicine and Senior Research Career Scientist with the Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence at the University Healthcare System Veterans Administration, was honored with a 2013 Fulbright US Scholar Award for teaching and research. Dr. Piette, who serves as the Global REACH Associate Director for e-Health, is seeking to foster the development of effective interventions for improving chronic disease management in Bolivia using cell phones (i.e., mobile health or mHealth tools).
Dr. Piette was recognized along with other international experts in medical informatics as an honored guest by the Bolivian Ministry of Health. Dr. Piette (right) is shown presenting a seminar to residents at the Hospital de las Clinicas, La Paz, Bolivia.
The interdisciplinary project is being conducted over three phases from 2013-2016 and building on the fields of behavioral psychology (measuring and improving health behaviors), medicine (understanding how best to support the quality of clinical care for chronically-ill patients), and systems engineering (developing reliable, scalable mHealth models). It includes community-based participatory research methods to gather data from chronically-ill patients and their healthcare teams, a pilot test of an mHealth service focused on diabetes and hypertension management, and a randomized controlled trial with a three month follow-up. Dr. Piette is in residence at La Universidad Católica Boliviana for two months each year, with half of his time spent teaching seminars in foundational areas of health services research, evidence-based medicine, and mentoring. The rest of his time is spent developing and implementing the research project. It is his hope that the relationships and experience gained through the Fulbright Scholarship will help to build bridges between Bolivian and US investigators that lead to new knowledge about how to approach the growing epidemic of chronic disease in Bolivia and other low-resource countries.
“Every project we undertake has three goals: (1) providing a learning experience for students at UM and our host country; (2) contributing to the science of mobile health; and (3) serving the local community. What’s been gratifying about our work in Bolivia is that we’ve been able to accomplish all three of these goals through a truly collaborative relationship with the country’s Ministry of Health, three universities, and four hospitals in La Paz.” —John Piette
globalreach.med.umich.edu
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