Population Health and Health Services Research Scholars Program

Purpose

Core to the mission of the Center for Population Health Sciences and Health Equity are the priorities to prepare future clinicians, deliver high-quality and equitable care in a high-performing health system, and create and disseminate community-led population health research within our world class academic medical enterprise. In service of these priorities, the purpose of these pilot awards is to:

Support the research careers of GW SMHS junior and mid-career faculty with research interest in the areas of population health, health services research, and health equity
Support Goal 10 of the GW SMHS and MFA (Academic Medical Enterprise) Strategic Plan to “identify and build clinical and research programs to improve population health and health equity for the communities served by the GW academic medical enterprise”

Program Eligibility

GW full-time regular faculty with an appointment at a GW clinical affiliate will be eligible to participate in the Scholars Program. Specifically, this program aims to support junior faculty with less than five years of experience in academic medicine and mid-career faculty with more than five years of experience in academic medicine seeking to gain new experience in population and health services research.

Program Scope – Population Health and Health Services Research

This Program will support scholars conducting research in population health and health services. Population health research is defined as the application of scientific methods to determine 1) the underlying causes of health outcomes within a defined group of people and/or 2) the impact of health interventions on the health status of a defined group of people. Health services research is defined as the application of scientific methods using a team-based science model to examine and/or evaluate access to, utilization, cost, quality, delivery, efficiency, organization/operational structure, and/or outcomes of healthcare services for individuals or populations.

Meet the Scholars

Academic Year 2025 - 2026

Cohort 2 Scholars

Our newest cohort joined the Program in academic year 2025-26 and are eligible to apply for a second year of funding.

Katie Donnelly

Project Title: Understanding and addressing fragmented care for pediatric survivors of community violence

Katie Donnelly is an associate professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at The George Washington University in Washington DC and an attending physician in the Emergency Department at Children’s National Hospital. She is the medical director for Safe Kids DC, an organization dedicated to preventing accidental injuries in children in Washington DC. She is also medical director of the Youth Violence Intervention Program at Children’s National, which serves children injured by community violence through case management and mentorship. She leads the pediatric working group of the Healthcare Alliance for Violence Intervention and is a member of Brady's This is Our Lane Advisory Council. Her personal research and advocacy interest is pediatric firearm injury prevention. She lives in Petworth with her husband, son and four (!) cats.

Christopher Payette, MD

Project Title: Bringing back “VIP” status: Understanding how unmet social need affects the success of Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs (HVIPs) and their participants

Christopher Payette, MD is an assistant professor with the Department of Emergency Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences and directs the Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Payette completed a research fellowship with a primary focus on social determinants of health that impact the care of end-stage renal disease patients presenting to the emergency department for acute care but has worked on a variety of acute and critical care research projects including co-directing a DC HSO funded project using social media to influence aggressive driving and a post-crash care analysis. He has a special interest in research to support public health intervention development as it pertains to injury prevention and hospital-based violence intervention programming. Dr. Payette also serves as an associate program director of the residency program at GW and is responsible for the education of resident physicians and medical students.

Rebecca Yee

Project Title: Investigating Group B Streptococcus in Prenatal Care: Testing, Regional Prevalence, and Antibiotic Resistance Patterns in the DMV

Rebecca Yee, Ph.D, D(ABMM) is the Chief of Microbiology and Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology at George Washington University. Before joining GW, she completed a medical and public health microbiology fellowship at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine.

As a clinical microbiologist, Yee’s research is in the development of novel diagnostic tools for infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance detection. She is also interested in exploring the clinical outcomes driven upon implementation of new diagnostics in real-world clinical settings. Her research uncovers the clinical performance of diagnostics, as well as the implications in diagnostic stewardship to improve patient outcomes, healthcare resource utilization, and cost-effectiveness across diverse healthcare settings.

Yee’s expertise and leadership is nationally recognized. She sits on committees serving leadership roles on behalf of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), and American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP). She is also on document working groups for Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI). In 2023, Dr. Yee was awarded the ASCP 40 Under Forty, Top 5 Honoree award.

Second Year Scholars

Cohort 1 Scholars: These Scholar have received a second year of funding and are completing their research in academic year 2025-26.

Sumitha Raman

Project Title: Implementing an inpatient clinical practice guideline for MOUD initiation at GWUH and Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center

Sumitha Raman is a Primary Care Internist and Addiction Medicine Specialist whose research focuses on population health, chronic disease management, and strengthening health system capacity to care for patients with substance use disorders. Her work uses mixed methods and implementation science approaches to expand access to evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD). She is currently exploring the role of clinical decision supports in facilitating the use of medications for opioid use disorder in hospital settings. She is also a co-investigator on CHOICE, an NIH-funded, multi-institutional randomized controlled trial examining the impact of integrated infectious disease and addiction medicine treatment on reducing infectious complications related to injection drug use.

In addition, she conducts medical education research as Associate Program Director of the GW Internal Medicine Residency Program. Her scholarship focuses on understanding how best to integrate panel management and addiction medicine training into graduate medical education, with the goal of preparing residents to deliver high-quality, population-based care for patients with chronic disease and substance use disorders. She is also involved in quality improvement efforts in ambulatory hypertension management, with specific interest in integrating clinical pharmacists into residency clinics to improve blood pressure outcomes.

Emmeline Ha, MD, FAAFP

Project Title: Behavioral Health Integration in Primary Care: Improving Access to Mental Health Services at GW MFA

Emmeline Ha, MD, FAAFP, is a family physician and assistant professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. She previously completed a health policy research fellowship with the American Board of Family Medicine, where she focused on primary care workforce development and health services research. Her academic interests include medical education, primary care, and advocacy for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities. Dr. Ha is committed to expanding access to mental health care and is actively advancing integrated behavioral health services within GW Medicine.

Sora Ely, MD

Project Title: Eliminating the Racial Disparities in Lung Cancer Screening through Community-based Provider Education

Sora Ely, MD is a thoracic surgeon at The George Washington University. She is board-certified in General Surgery and in Thoracic Surgery. She serves as Co-Director of the GW Lung Cancer Screening Program and Director of the GW Incidental Lung Nodule Program. Her research focuses on practice improvement and clinical outcomes in thoracic surgery and lung cancer screening. She has a special interest in population health and health equity in lung cancer screening, and one of her current projects is a grant-funded initiative to improve uptake and reduce race disparities in lung cancer screening in DC Wards 7 and 8. She also serves as Co-Chair of the DC Cancer Coalition in partnership with DC Health.

Leah Steckler, MD FACEP

Project Title: Assessment, Implementation, and Analysis of Efficacy of Telehealth Interventions to Reduce Fall-related Morbidity and Mortality in Washington, DC Among Older Adult Patients Presenting for Emergency Care

Leah Steckler, MD FACEP is an Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Heath Sciences. Dr. Steckler currently serves as the Director of the Geriatric Emergency Department (GED) at GW and her current research interests are related to fall prevention and other issues impacting the emergency care of older adults.

Laure Experton

Project Title: Community Resilience Initiative: Implementing PM+ for Mental Health Support in Washington, DC

Dr. Laure Experton is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University and an outpatient psychiatrist whose clinical work spans mood, anxiety, trauma‑related, and stress‑associated disorders. She completed her psychiatry residency at Georgetown University Hospital, where she served as Chief Resident and pursued advanced training in psychotherapy and global health.

Dr. Experton’s scholarship focuses on improving mental health equity through the integration of mental health services into primary care and the training of non‑specialist providers in underserved communities. She leads several implementation projects using WHO evidence‑based interventions, including Problem Management Plus (PM+) in New York City and Washington, DC, and Self‑Help Plus (SH+) in Senegal in partnership with the World Bank. As a Population Health and Health Services Research Scholar, she has secured grant funding to advance scalable approaches that reduce mental health disparities.

She is fluent in English and French and proficient in Spanish.

Past Scholars

Academic Year 2024 - 2025: Ameer Abutaleb, MD

Project Title: An electronic medical record algorithm to enhance liver cancer screening in patients with cirrhosis

Ameer O. Abutaleb, MD is an assistant professor of surgery and medicine at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He is also a board-certified physician with The GW Medical Faculty Associates. Dr. Abutaleb received his medical degree in 2014, his fellowship in Gastroenterology and Hepatology in 2021, and his Transplant Hepatology fellowship in 2022 from the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

He is a prior recipient of the American Gastroenterological Association Eli and Edythe Broad Student Research Fellow award and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Fellowship. His research interests are in translational and clinical studies in viral hepatitis and HIV-related liver disease.

Catherine A. Varnum, MD MPH

Project Title: Assessing and Addressing Food Insecurity in a Patient Population with Uncontrolled Type 2 Diabetes

Catherine A. Varnum, MD MPH is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine where she teaching medical students, internal medicine residents, as well as takes care of her own primary care patient panel. She also serves as the Division Quality Chief for DGIM, a Core Faculty Member of the Internal Medicine Residency, and an Epic Physician Builder. She completed her MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at The George Washington University – Milken Institute School of Public Health, performing research for her Master's thesis at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. She attended the University of Maryland School of Medicine and completed her residency in Internal Medicine-Primary Care at New York University.