Recent Highlights

Principal Investigator: Dana Ferrari-Light, DO, MPH
CPDE is providing support to a Dartmouth Cancer Center Prouty funded project led by Dr. Dana Ferrari-Light, Thoracic Surgeon, at Dartmouth Health. The study aims to identify factors that contribute to low rates of lung cancer screening in eligible women, especially those who have completed breast cancer screening, to inform targeted interventions to improve lung cancer survival. Using a mix of surveys and interviews, CPDE will explore the barriers to lung cancer screening and the acceptance of dual breast and lung cancer screening with a population of women who live in rural NH and VT.

CPDE is supporting an NIH funded Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) project led by Dr. Laura Paulin with the Center for Rural Healthcare Delivery Science at Dartmouth Health. Dr. Paulin's work aims to explore risk perceptions, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors surrounding environmental risk factors and potential strategies to mitigate such exposures among individuals with COPD living in northern New England. To date, CPDE has conducted patient interviews and qualitative analysis to understand the patient perspective and experience with environmental exposures. In this study's next phase, we will support interviews and analysis with community and municipal leaders who are actively involved in housing, heating assistance, and public health messaging to understand resources for tenants and/or homeowners regarding fuel and energy assistance/use, weatherization programs, and other areas.​

CPDE is working with the New Hampshire Area Health Education Center to provide multi-year evaluation support for their four domains of work: AHEC Scholars, health career pathway programs for youth, workforce development for professionals and community health workers, and building strategic partnerships. Our support includes constructing a logic model, database management, surveys, and focus groups to inform program improvement, better understand outcomes, enhance coordination between the three program centers across the state, and support complex annual grant reporting.

Published in January 2026 in the Journal of Rural Health. Healthcare workforce shortages are acute in rural areas. This study uses a holistic workforce retention framework to examine evidence and identified gaps in recruitment and retention programs, using the Veterans Health Administration as a case study. Of the 31 initiatives evaluated, one third (32%) focused on recruitment only, 48% focused on recruitment and retention, and 19% focused on retention only. Nearly three-quarters (71%) lacked sufficient evidence or were too early in implementation to assess effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the initiative. The strongest evidence existed for education loan repayment and nursing residency programs.

CPDE is evaluating the Dartmouth Health GWEP, a rural workforce enhancement project, led by Ellen Flaherty at the Geriatric Center of Excellence at DH. The 5-year project funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) provides education and training in geriatric and dementia care to nursing students (LNAs, LPNs, and RNs) medical residents, fellows, and faculty preceptors, and a monthly learning collaborative made up of interprofessional practice staff from FQHCs who are being trained in core components of high-quality geriatric care. CPDE is assessing program delivery, effectiveness, and outcomes through a mix of surveys and interviews with learners and quarterly monitoring of quality measures. Data is being used to improve program delivery, reach, and outcomes of participating learners.

Rebecca Butcher and Kathy Carluzzo joined the Dartmouth biomedical research community to participate in the 2nd annual event in Oct. 2025. CPDE provides evaluation and mixed methods services for over 45 clinical and research faculty and programs across the Dartmouth enterprise. The research event provides CPDE leaders with an opportunity to network with partners, meet with others doing research in the community and share information about CPDE services and examples of our research outputs and dissemination.

CPDE has created a FREE six-part course sharing practical tools that community organizations can use to evaluate their impact on the communities they serve.Course Description: Do you have a clear idea of the impact of your programs?  Have you ever felt challenged when funders, partners or and people using your program ask for measurable outcomes? Are you certain the people you serve still need what you think they do? This ECHO course will share practical tools to evaluate the impact of your projects and programs on the communities you serve.  In this six-part series, trained evaluators will provide tools that help you: outline the basic steps to design an evaluation plan that maps to your organization’s mission and vision; identify the most useful data and information to measure program success and improvement opportunities; and summarize evaluation results so everyone can understand the impact of your work.  Real-world case examples will be used throughout, and two of the sessions will be open “office hours” to give participants the opportunity to practice using the tools and receive feedback if desired on their own program evaluation plans. As material will build across sessions, we encourage people to attend the whole series but each session will be informational so come whenever you can!

Target Audience: Non-profit organizations, community/public health entities, Foundation for Healthy Community partners

Course Dates: October 9th – December 18th 2025 (Sessions held every other Thursday from 1-2pm EST)

CPDE presented the methodology for evaluating a pilot framework to improve the health and well-being of patients with arthritis. The framework was created by partners at the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors' (NACDD). The framework leverages the community care hub model in which patients with social and chronic healthcare needs are identified in the clinic and referred to hubs. Hubs partner with healthcare systems by coordinating and supporting networks of community-based organizations that provide patients with access to health-related resources and services. This work was published in Frontiers in Health Services as part of a Research Topic: Dissemination and Implementation Science in Medicine.

CPDE is evaluating Project NETT, a SAMHSA-funded program led by the Center for Trauma-responsive Practice Change. Project NETT aims to expand New Hampshire’s capacity to address the gaps in services for traumatized children aged 0 to 6 and their caregivers. To do this, project leaders are training mental health providers in Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) using an 18-month Learning Collaborative model, training children-serving professionals (educators, first responders, physicians, nurses, etc.) in early childhood trauma, monitoring and facilitating referrals for CPP services, and strengthening a statewide network of certified CPP providers.

CPDE is providing support to an American Cancer Society funded project led by Dr. Tara Kaufmann, Breast Oncologist and Palliative Care provider at Dartmouth Health. Dr. Kaufmann's trial aims to develop and test a standardized and feasible method to monitor patients for unmet palliative care needs and direct timely referral to specialty palliative care in oncology outpatient settings. The trial will utilize monthly Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) to measure a patient’s physical and psychosocial needs and use response thresholds to trigger referrals to specialty palliative care. CPDE is supporting pre-implementation focus groups with clinical teams to refine the trial workflows and identify potential implementation barriers and facilitators. As the trial progresses, CPDE will be assisting with patient and provider interviews to gather feedback on PRO CONNECT efficacy and feasibility.

CPDE is leading the evaluation of The Dartmouth SYNERGY Clinical and Translational Science Institute led by PIs Dr. Steven Bernstein, Dr. Anna Tosteson, and Dr. Keith Paulsen. SYNERGY is funded by the NIH's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences with additional institutional support from Dartmouth Health and Dartmouth College. SYNERGY aims to catalyze research and train scientists across the translational spectrum with a focus on rural healthcare delivery. CPDE is currently surveying the Dartmouth clinical and research community to help SYNERGY leaders determine how best to allocate pilot funding, training opportunities, data informatics and research methods and statistical consulting services. The CPDE team members have built a comprehensive evaluation plan to track progress on short and long term evaluation goals, including training evaluations, data collection on the pilot program awardees, and systems to map milestone achievements and SYNERGY impacts over the years. With local, regional and national impacts anticipated with SYNERGY achievements, CPDE is bringing their expertise in multi-level mixed methods longitudinal evaluation and rapid cycle data reporting tools to use to support the SYNERGY team.

If you are a Dartmouth College or Dartmouth Health clinician or researcher please take a few minutes today to fill out the SYNERGY Needs & Interests Survey.

In January 2025, Kathy Carluzzo, MS, former Senior Research Associate at CPDE, accepted the position of Associate Director of CPDE. Kathy came to Dartmouth in 2010 as a Health Policy Fellow and joined CPDE in 2014. In her time at CPDE, Kathy has honed her skills in survey design, database development, research project management, grant writing, mixed methods data collection and analysis of primary and secondary data, including clinical, claims, survey, patient-reported, and qualitative sources. Kathy currently leads CPDE’s contract with the VA Office of Rural Health and brings her analytic expertise to CPDE’s partnerships with the Arthritis Foundation and National Association of Chronic Disease Directors under the leadership of Dr. Karen Schifferdecker. In her role as CPDE AD, Kathy will lead the recruitment and hiring of new staff at CPDE, internal process improvements, budget tracking and project invoicing, and oversee CPDE’s finance and operations assistant. Please join us in congratulating Kathy for her promotion to CPDE Associate Director.

 

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Sharon O’Connor
CPDE Associate Director

December 2024