Center for Innovation in Sleep Self-Management
The Center for Innovation in Sleep Self-Management is aimed at developing, testing and implementing self-management interventions to help adults and children with chronic illnesses sleep better and improve their health.
The center will leverage self-monitoring technologies, such as smart home sensors that track noise, light and temperature; mobile applications that measure dietary, exercise and caffeine intake; and wrist monitors that measure sleep-wake activity and light levels. These tools will allow patients to monitor their sleep behavior, set goals and receive feedback on adopting healthy behaviors.
The UW Center for One Health Research (COHR) investigates the health linkages between humans, animals, and their shared environments; including zoonoses, comparative clinical medicine, animals as sentinels, animal worker health, food safety, and the human-animal bond.
Through transdisciplinary partnerships, COHR develops innovative strategies for healthy coexistence between humans and animals in sustainable local and global ecosystems.
The University of Washington Nanotoxicology Center (UW Nanotox), in concert with the National Institute of Environmental Health Centers for Nanotechnology Health Implications Research (NCNHIR) consortium, develops standardized techniques, analytical tools, and mathematical models to assess and predict the toxicity and environmental impact of engineered nanomaterials.
PACES in Epilepsy is a consumer-driven, evidenced based self-management intervention for adults with chronic epilepsy. The prograim aims to educate participants about epilepsy and its co-morbidities in order to promote improved problem-solving, and to apply cognitive-behavior therapy principles to managing stress and sadness.
We have researched and validated the program for both face-to-face and telehealth applications, and are in the process of adapting the program for people in rural/remote areas and Veterans. We are actively seeking partnership for knowledge translation/program implementation and sustention, as well as expansion of our work to other populations (e.g., people with MS).
PORPP’s Vision:
To be a global leader in generating knowledge to improve individual and population health through transformative learning, research, and dissemination about the effectiveness, safety, and value of medical products, services, and policies.
For twenty years PORPP has been a leader in studying, disseminating and informing policy about the impact of pharmaceuticals and other medical care on individual and population health and training the next generation of outcomes researchers. We are primed to morph into an higher organizational unit (a center or institute) in the coming year. We look forward to sustaining the
Bringing faculty, staff, and students together with community to address the most challenging urban issues today and in the future. We work across disciplines, professions, and expertise to catalyze improvements in human and environmental health in cities and urban landscapes around the globe.
The de Tornyay Center serves as a catalyst for promoting healthy aging through its support of research and education in the field of gerontology.
The Center is committed to advancing and sharing knowledge about successful aging and ways professionals and systems can promote optimal experiences for older adults. Developing competent and compassionate healthcare providers is critically important.
The Center is a resource for faculty involved in teaching gerontology, for students interested in older adults, and for practicing professionals seeking continuing education and collaborative initiatives. Specifically, the Center promotes the development of researchers from undergraduate nursing students through senior nursing faculty by creating opportunities for researchers to exchange ideas, funding projects, and sharing research findings through seminars and presentations.
Nursing faculty affiliated with the de Tornyay Center for Healthy Aging come from several health sciences fields and conduct research ranging from basic research to clinical inquiry and systems research. Studies are conducted in a variety of settings, including both communities and organizations. Some examples of research topics include:
- Cognitive aging
- Dementia and dementia caregivers
- Frailty
- Menopause
- Palliative care
- Physical activity
- Technology and older adults
The Center is committed to improving the lives of older adults locally and globally. We partner with community organizations to host conferences, informational seminars, events, discussions, and more. Our faculty are members of local and national associations and research centers and often are featured speakers or guest lecturers.
The Healthy Brain Research Network (HBRN) is a thematic network within the CDC Prevention Research Centers Program that brings together interdisciplinary expertise from six leading academic institutions across the U.S. and draws upon the collaborative strengths of established academic-community partnerships. HBRN efforts are informed by the work of The Healthy Brain Initiative: The Public Health Road Map for State and National Partnerships, 2013–2018 (Road Map), and strategically align with other national priorities as identified in the Institute of Medicine Report on Cognitive Aging, Progress in Understanding and Opportunities for Action; The National Alzheimer’s Action Plan, and Healthy People 2020 objectives. UW serves the Coordinating Center for the HBRN.
The UW School of Nursing Center for Global Health Nursing works to promote nursing research and training to build capacity for appropriate and sustainable improvements in health and healthcare. It aims to do this through innovative nursing science, across differing cultural contexts, both locally and abroad.
The center harnesses the existing expertise, experience, and enthusiasm of the UW School of Nursing faculty and students in partnership with local, national and global nursing organizations and academic institutions.
AIMS (Advancing Integrated Mental Health Solutions) Center faculty and staff at the University of Washington have worked for over 20 years to develop, test and implement an approach called Collaborative Care to treat the large numbers of people suffering unnecessarily from mental illness. Collaborative Care is an integrated care model that brings high quality mental health care to primary care clinics and other familiar settings. Its strength lies in treating persistent mental health conditions like depression and anxiety that require systematic follow-up for patients to get better.
Our core works on social, behavioral and public health related research supporting HIV prevention and care.
The specific aims of the Sociobehavioral and Prevention Research Core are to support:
HIV Prevention Research, including technical assistance to CFAR investigators, organizing forums for interdisciplinary research community development, expanding our substantive expertise to include addictions, substance use, and mental health research.
Local Community Outreach, including working with CFAR’s Community Action Board to pursue community-based research priorities and translational opportunities, taking advantage of our institutional ties to Seattle & King County Public Health to stimulate collaborative research projects and evidence-based policy development.
International Community Outreach, including working with the International Core to identify collaborative research and translational opportunities with the new University of Nairobi Center for HIV Prevention and Research (UNCHIVPR) on translational research for HIV prevention. Integrating social, behavioral, and clinical science is increasingly necessary for progress in controlling HIV, and the Sociobehavioral and Prevention Research Core works to assure this synergy by providing support to behavioral, clinical, and social scientists in their research.
Over the past 30 years, children in the United States have become gradually less active, less able to do physical activities, and less healthy. Inactive lifestyles are taking away the capacity of children and adolescents to function and develop normally and to achieve peak health.
UW Medicine’s Sports Health and Safety Institute (SHSI) is an international education, advocacy and research organization devoted to helping people pursue an active lifestyle while providing tools to keep them safe and speed healing after illness or injury.
Founded in 2015, SHSI focuses on three core activities:
- Education. Safe sports, good health decisions, excellent care and informed policy begin with education. The Institute’s educational materials are freely available to parents, athletes, coaches and medical professionals.
- Advocacy. SHSI pursues policies and supports legislation that advance sports safety and health.
- Research. SHSI collaborates with researchers to identify best practices for effective public health education, to change behaviors and make sports safer, and to advance knowledge about sports-related concussion.
The Center for Cardiovascular Biology is dedicated to discovering the molecular basis of cardiovascular disease, harnessing this information to develop new therapies, and training the next generation of cardiovascular physicians and scientists.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent global health research center at the University of Washington that provides rigorous and comparable measurement of the world’s most important health problems and evaluates the strategies used to address them.
IHME makes this information freely available so that policymakers have the evidence they need to make informed decisions about how to allocate resources to best improve population health.
The UW Psychiatry Division of Population Health is dedicated to improving the health of the public by developing, testing, evaluating, and implementing effective behavioral health interventions across the entire spectrum of health care delivery.
We are committed to finding new and innovative approaches to providing effective behavioral health care to defined populations. Our strength lies in knowledge transfer and practice-based learning with implementation work driving new research questions and research results driving new implementation methodology. Our researchers conduct both qualitative and quantitative research and use large data sets to establish benchmarks for treatment outcomes and to study variation across patients, providers, practice and policy.
The Division of Population Health focuses on four primary challenges facing mental health care:
Improving Access
Although there are numerous effective treatments for psychiatric disorders, these treatments often do not reach the patients who need them. We develop and test innovations that increase the healthcare system’s capacity to deliver effective treatments and increase patient’s access to and engagement in effective treatments. Scientific Aims:
- Shift treatment tasks to lower levels of care and encourage patient
self-management to increase capacity. - Use technology to substitute virtual care encounters for face-to-face visits to increase access.
- Use virtual care technologies to augment face-to-face visits by facilitating between-visit patient-provider communications and to better determine when face-to-face visits are needed in order to increase both access and capacity.
- “Flip the clinic” and deliver care in non-traditional settings, including the home, to increase access.
Targeting Treatment
For individuals with psychiatric disorders who engage in treatment, it often takes too long to find the right treatment (or combination of treatments) that is most effective. We identify and test methods for predicting which treatment or treatments will be most effective for a particular patient, as well as methods for more quickly detecting when treatment is ineffective. Scientific Aims:
- Develop and test feasible methods for measurement-based care to facilitate identifying treatment non-response.
- Test approaches to promoting shared decision making to encourage the delivery of treatments that address patients’ treatment goals.
- Identify important treatment moderators to help patients and providers choose the right treatment.
- Determine how pharmacogenetics can inform treatment decision making to facilitate precision medicine.
Closing the Mortality Gap
Individuals living with psychiatric disorders endure a greater burden of illness over their lifetimes and experience higher mortality rates. For individuals living with a psychiatric disorder, we develop clinical and public health interventions that promote healthy lifestyles, higher quality of care for physical health disorders and better management of side effects of psychotropic medications. Scientific Aims:
- Develop and test smoking cessation, opioid tapering, and exercise programs for patients with psychiatric disorders.
- Develop and test models of integrating of physical health care into specialty mental health settings.
- Develop and test feasible methods to monitor metabolic side effects of psychotropic medications.
- Develop and test clinical and public health interventions to prevent suicide.
Bridging the Research-Practice Chasm
It takes too long for newly developed evidence-based treatments to be adopted by providers and incorporated into routine care. To bridge the chasm between research and practice, we identify and test implementation strategies that effectively promote the adoption of new evidence-based practices. Scientific Aims:
- Identify variations in the quality of care and deployment of evidence based practices in routine care.
- Identify valid quality metrics and pay-for-performance systems.
- Develop and test clinical decision support systems that encourage evidence based care.
- Test alternative training and facilitation strategies to promote implementation.
- Adapt existing evidence based practices for different populations and clinic settings.
The University and its affiliated institutions, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Seattle Children’s Hospital, are widely regarded as leaders among the premiere biomedical research institutions in the world, with great strengths in the constellation of areas crucial for success in stem cell research and regenerative medicine.
Their strategy is to bring these interdisciplinary strengths together, and to leverage their basic research to develop therapies. ISCRM integrates diverse scientific and clinical disciplines.
The Rural/Underserved Opportunities Program (RUOP) is a four-week, elective immersion experience in community medicine for students between their first and second years of medical school. During their four-week rotation, students live in rural or urban underserved communities throughout Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho (WWAMI). They work side-by-side with local physicians providing health care to underserved populations.
Administered by the UW Department of Family Medicine, RUOP is a collaborative effort of the UW School of Medicine, WWAMI campuses and the Area Health Education Centers. It is also supported by the Washington and Idaho Academies of Family Physicians. For more information, contact the RUOP Administrative Offices.
The HIV Technical Cooperation Group (TCG) was formed as a pragmatic ‘think tank’ where thought leaders and practitioners exchange ideas, share best practices and catalyze innovation to build capacity in Public Health for HIV prevention and care.
Its goal is to make all TCG events highly-interactive working-group sessions that focus on pragmatic approaches to infrastructure issues in HIV public health.
The Clinical Informatics Research Group designs, develops, and operates information systems to support research to improving individual and population health.
CIRG systems securely manage health information for projects in the Clinical, Public Health, and Global Health Informatics domains.
Its collaborators are based at the University of Washington, and at health care organizations across the US and around the world.
Washington Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) helps people in vulnerable populations understand and secure their legal rights regarding safe housing, adequate schooling, medical needs and more. It partners with lawyers, doctors, social workers, and other medical staff to remove barriers to good health.
The HIPRC is an interdisciplinary organization based on the Harborview Medical Center campus, and engages over 80 faculty from 33 departments and schools. We have 20 trainees and 30 junior faculty. Sections focus on traumatic brain injury, safe and active transport, violence and care of injured patients. Work activities are research, training, education and outreach. The mission of the center is to reduce the injury burden locally, nationally and globally.
The HEALTH-E initiative is an interdisciplinary research group at the University of Washington, Seattle examining technology and aging. We are interested in designing technology tools to promote independent aging.
The Center for Law, Science and Global Health was established in 1994. It provides the leadership, academic courses, academic advising, career counseling, practicums, externships and internships, for all of the University of Washington School of Law’s Health Law programs.
Health Law encompasses a broad range of topics, ranging from government regulation of health law to health care business transactions, telemedicine, finance and reimbursement, to the ethical controversies presented in various areas of medicine.
The Barer Institute was established in 2010 by Stan and Alta Barer to provide specialized legal education focused on the multidisciplinary role of law in promoting health, education, and economic development.
The goal of the Institute is to utilize lawyers as leaders in providing advice and solutions to health, education, and economic development issues in lower and middle income developing countries.
Since 1996, CAYAC has been training law students to advocate for children and youth in a variety of state-involved contexts.
Today, CAYAC students represent children and youth in the child welfare and immigration systems. It also represents youth who are homeless and work to advocate for the civil legal needs of queer youth.
The Race and Justice Clinic works to disrupt the systemic over-representation of youth of color in school discipline and the juvenile justice system by empowering youth and their support networks through community education and direct representation.
Our Center focuses on developing interventions for trauma-related psychopathology such as PTSD and depression. We are working with local and international refugee populations to develop a brief Islam focused interview and are partnering with the Psychiatric Genetics Consortium-PTSD to conduct worldwide genome association studies.
Reducing climate risks requires robust and reliable information that people can use when making decisions.
The Climate Impacts Group supports the development of climate resilience by advancing understanding and awareness of climate risks, and working closely with public and private entities to apply this information as they act to shape society’s future.
I run the TransYouth Project, the first large-scale, national, longitudinal study of transgender and gender nonconforming children’s development. We recruit transgender and gender nonconforming children when they are 3-12 to participate in this study, along with their families, and will follow their development and mental health for 20 years.
We hope to discover how gender diverse youth differ and are similar to other youth at key points throughout development, the medical, familial, and broader social systems that contribute to resilience as well as disparities in well-being amongst these youth, and to work to educate the broader public about transgender and gender nonconforming people throughout the world.
The Center for Child and Family Well-being promotes the positive development and well-being of children, from infancy through adolescence, particularly those experiencing disadvantage and adversity. The center uses a bioecological approach to children’s well-being addressing the inter-dependence of children’s social, emotional, cognitive and physical development, as they are shaped by individual, interpersonal, community and broader socioeconomic, social and cultural forces. The interactions among these factors influence whether children have vulnerable or resilient responses to economic disadvantage and adversity. CCFW supports children’s resilience by infusing mindfulness, compassion, and social-emotional skills into the lives of children, their parents, caregivers, teachers and the professionals serving them.
CCFW accomplishes our goals by engendering, translating, applying and sharing knowledge that stems from our interdisciplinary research conducted by over 20 faculty affiliates from across the University of Washington. Our research serves as the foundation on which we build education, professional training, prevention, intervention, outreach and advocacy activities of the center. We are committed to serving as a resource and partner in promoting the well-being of children and families locally and globally.
The mission of the Women’s Center is to create a more inclusive and compassionate society by promoting gender equity and social justice through educational programs and services that allows all participants to succeed in life.
Steve works on ethics, political philosophy and global environmental problems, especially as these concern duties to future generations. His recent work focuses on climate change, population growth, geoengineering, nuclear energy and the precautionary principle.
Innovations in System-wide Professional Improvement and Redesigns in Education’s (INSPIRE) ultimate goal is to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for students in poverty-impacted, culturally and linguistically diverse public schools.
They achieve this by partnering with schools and districts, collaborating on goals, and setting up research-based professional learning routines that will continue long after our formal engagement has ended.
The West Coast Poverty Center works to bridge the gaps between antipoverty research, practice, and policy by connecting scholars, policymakers and practitioners; facilitating important social policy research; magnifying the reach of new knowledge; and fostering the next generation of antipoverty scholars.
The mission of the Latino Center for Health is to provide leadership to promote the health and well-being of Latinos in Washington State, regionally and nationally, across the lifespan.
The Latino Center will bring about sustainable changes in health through innovative community-engaged research, and mentorship and training opportunities for students and faculty, drawing upon the multidisciplinary scholarship from the tri-campuses of the University of Washington.
The overarching goal of all studies within the Behavioral Medicine Research Group is to improve the lives of children and adults through research designed to explore the etiology and mechanisms of adverse health conditions, and to develop interventions designed to prevent or mitigate the impact of these conditions.
The Indigenous Wellness Research Institute seeks to marshal community, tribal, academic, and governmental resources toward innovative, culture-centered interdisciplinary, collaborative social and behavioral research and education.
The Simpson Center for the Humanities fosters intellectual discovery across boundaries, supporting crossdisciplinary exchange among scholars at the University of Washington and beyond. It is known internationally for its leadership in the digital humanities and public scholarship.
As one of the largest and most comprehensive humanities centers in the United States, the Simpson Center offers University of Washington scholars a rich spectrum of opportunities for intellectual community. The Center supports research and collaboration that allows scholars to build networks nationally and internationally.
The Center’s mission supports four objectives:
- Crossdisciplinary research and inquiry
- Initiatives in the humanities at the leading edge of change
- Innovative study at the graduate level
- Scholarship that reaches audiences beyond the academy
The Simpson Center supports an expansive definition of the humanities that includes collaboration with social scientists, artists, and scholars across disciplines. Recent projects have examined global health partnerships, crowdfunding for health care, the urban environment, and many other topics related to population health.
The Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity is committed to research and innovation by, with, and for minoritized and marginalized people. It is dedicated to leadership development, and foundationally community-centered in the desire to build a more equitable world in which our words, imagery, and institutions are infused with understanding, respect, and justice.
The Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences was founded in 1999 with the triple mission of galvanizing collaborative research between social scientists and statisticians, developing a menu of new graduate courses for social science students, and enhancing undergraduate statistics training for the social sciences.
Initiated with funding from the University Initiatives Fund, CSSS was the first center in the nation devoted to the interface of statistics and the social sciences.
CSDE is a community of faculty and students associated to advance population science through research and training.
CSDE scholars develop new demographic measures and methods, advance knowledge about population dynamics, generate new data and evidence to support population science, and train the next generation of demographers.
CSDE supports five primary research areas: demographic measurements & methods; migration & settlement; well being of families & households; environments & population; health of people & populations.
Bringing faculty, staff, and students together with community to address the most challenging urban issues today and in the future. We work across disciplines, professions, and expertise to catalyze improvements in human and environmental health in cities and urban landscapes around the globe.
The CSNE’s mission is to develop innovative ways to connect a deep computational understanding of how the brain adapts and processes information with the design of implantable devices that interact seamlessly with the nervous system.
CSNE aspires to help people with disabilities and develop novel modes of human-computer interaction by connecting brains with technology.
They study signals from the brain and use that information to stimulate a part of the brain or spinal cord for neurorehabilitation, including the use of an assistive device.
The Barer Institute was established in 2010 by Stan and Alta Barer to provide specialized legal education focused on the multidisciplinary role of law in promoting health, education, and economic development.
The goal of the Institute is to utilize lawyers as leaders in providing advice and solutions to health, education, and economic development issues in lower and middle income developing countries.
The Race and Justice Clinic works to disrupt the systemic over-representation of youth of color in school discipline and the juvenile justice system by empowering youth and their support networks through community education and direct representation.
The Native American Law Center promotes the development of Indian law, and encourages Native Americans, and others with an interest in Indian law, to attend law school.
It also acts as a resource to Indian tribes, other governments and individuals in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and across the country.
Since 1996, CAYAC has been training law students to advocate for children and youth in a variety of state-involved contexts.
Today, CAYAC students represent children and youth in the child welfare and immigration systems. It also represents youth who are homeless and work to advocate for the civil legal needs of queer youth.
The Center for Law, Science and Global Health was established in 1994. It provides the leadership, academic courses, academic advising, career counseling, practicums, externships and internships, for all of the University of Washington School of Law’s Health Law programs.
Health Law encompasses a broad range of topics, ranging from government regulation of health law to health care business transactions, telemedicine, finance and reimbursement, to the ethical controversies presented in various areas of medicine.
The only resource of its kind in Washington State, the IPNW frees innocent prisoners using DNA and other new evidence.
IPNW was founded in 1997 to exonerate the innocent, remedy causes of wrongful conviction and offer law students an outstanding education.
The UW Superfund Research Program is comprised of an interdisciplinary team of faculty and graduate students from University of Washington departments of: Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, Epidemiology, Genome Sciences, Environmental Chemistry, Civil & Environmental Engineering and Pharmacology.
UW SRP investigators focus on neurotoxic metals cadmium, manganese and arsenic. These metals commonly occur at waterways and hazardous waste sites, negatively impacting human health and ecosystem functions
The Center works to understand the mechanisms that define children’s susceptibility to pesticides and air pollution. Identifying the implications of this susceptibility for developmental and learning trajectories, and partnering with communities to translate the Center’s findings into risk communication, risk management and public health prevention strategies.