HDRI Affiliates

David Auerbach is a health economist and has been studying the health care workforce for 25 years.  This collaboration has resulted in numerous journal articles, media appearances, conference presentations and a book published in 2009 on the nursing workforce which has been used in nursing schools nationwide. He has worked with Drs Staiger and Buerhaus continuously since 1997, while also introducing his knowledge and passion for nursing workforce issues into the numerous positions he has held, particularly those at RAND and the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission, finding further avenues to advance research and influence policy. 
After graduating with his PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University in 2002, where his dissertation focused on aging and long-term care policy, he was a Principal Analyst with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 2003-10 where he was a lead developer of CBO’s health insurance coverage micro-simulation model used in analysis of the Affordable Care Act. He then worked as a Senior Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation from 2010-2014 where he expanded the scope of his workforce research as principle investigator on projects including an investigation of the adoption of the Doctor of Nursing Practice by nursing education programs in the US, a study of care utilization patterns of nurse practitioner/physician care teams compared to physician-led care in the Kaiser Health system in Georgia, and a study of primary care workforce implications of expanded adoption of patient centered medical homes and nurse-led clinics. Since 2014, he has been Deputy Director and now Senior Director for Research at the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. At the HPC, he has led a research team tasked with seeking to understand how health care delivery and efficiency can be improved in Massachusetts and making recommendations to policymakers. As an example of this work, his team authored a brief describing the contribution of Nurse Practitioners to primary care in Massachusetts and recommending removal of state scope of practice restrictions for APRNs. These restrictions were removed in January, 2021 in Massachusetts. 
Auerbach is a nationally-recognized expert on the nursing workforce in particular, and is frequently sought by the media for commentary, at conferences as a speaker, and as a research collaborator.  Above all, he seeks to improve health care and health care delivery both for patients and for care providers. 

Kenrick Cato, PhD, RN, CPHIMS, FAAN, FACMI is a Professor of Informatics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and a Nurse Scientist for Pediatric Data and Analytics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 

Dr. Cato is a respected creator and evaluator of decision-support tools. Dr. Cato is a clinical informatician whose research focuses on applying state-of-the-art data science methods to electronic patient data to support decision-making for clinicians, patients, and caregivers.  

He is the author of over 100 publications, with a number of notable awards. He was awarded the Bronze Star from the United States Army in 2005, elected to the New York Academy of Medicine in 2015, the American Academy of Nursing in 2019, and the American College of Medical Informatics in 2023. 

Dr. Porat-Dahlerbruch is a registered nurse and health services researcher. He seeks to understand innovative policies and methods to better leverage the nursing workforce and improve healthcare service delivery. 
Before joining the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing, Dr. Porat-Dahlerbruch was a Fulbright Scholar in Israel. He completed his PhD and BSN at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. He was a pre-doctoral fellow at Penn Nursing’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research. 
Dr. Porat-Dahlerbruch has several interests in nursing health services research in both the U.S. and internationally. First, he researches policies and strategies for integrating nurse practitioners into health systems to enable maximal NP practice. Dr. Porat-Dahlerbruch is also interested in how national-level nursing education policies affect nursing care quality and patient outcomes. His work draws on traditional health services research methods, implementation science, and human capital theory. 
Dr. Porat-Dahlerbruch teaches graduate-level health policy and lectures on international health policy topics. His approach to teaching aims to build critical thinking, leadership, and problem-solving abilities by promoting discourse and discussion in the classroom. 

Dr. Kristin Hittle Gigli is an acute care pediatric nurse practitioner and health services researcher.  She is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at Health Innovation at the University of Texas at Arlington.  Her program of research examines the role of the advanced practice provider workforce in providing care to hospitalized children. In addition, she conducts health policy analysis, particularly those policies related to nurse practitioner scope-of-practice and pediatric mental health.  
Dr. Gigli earned her nurse practitioner degree from the University of Pennsylvania in pediatric critical care. She earned her PhD in Nursing with a concentration in health services research from Vanderbilt University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. In addition to her research, Kristin has more than 15 years of experience work in pediatric critical care and holds a clinical appointment in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Children’s Health Dallas.   
Dr. Gigli is a past board member of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners and is the current liaison to the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Hospital Care and the Association of Medical Schools Pediatric Department Chairs (AMSPDC) Workforce Initiative. In addition, she was a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Committee on the Pediatric Subspecialty Workforce and Its Impact on Child Health and Well-Being. 

Professor Gerry Lee has worked in advanced practice for over twenty-five years examining the role of nurse practitioner in relation to clinical outcomes, clinical supervision, patient satisfaction, staff knowledge on the roles, education and training needs. She has worked in Australia from 2002 to 2011 where she developed one of the first Masters programmes for Nurse Practitioners. She returned to the UK in 2012 to work at King's College London where she was the lead for the Advanced Clinical Practice programme up to 2023. Her other research expertise is in workforce development and optimising health in long-term conditions using shared-decision making and digital technology. In 2018, she established a nurse-led rapid access clinic at St Thomas’s Hospital, London for patients with suspected atrial fibrillation and ran this clinic for 5 years. 
Professor Lee is a member of the advocacy committee for the Association of Cardiovascular Nursing and Allied Professionals and the Council of Cardio-oncology at the European Society of Cardiology. She has published over 130 peer reviewed publications and is a principal investigator on Horizon 2020 European Union EHRA-PATHS study: 'Addressing multimorbidity in elderly atrial fibrillation patients through interdisciplinary, tailored, patient-centered care pathways.'  (EHRA-PATHS). She was appointed as a Professor and Chair Nursing and Health Services Research at University College Cork, Ireland in November 2023. UCC Research Profiles: Gerry Lee, Nursing & Midwifery. 

Dr. Ruth Martin-Misener, PhD, NP, is a nurse practitioner and health services researcher. At Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Dr. Martin-Misener serves as Professor and Director at the School of Nursing and Assistant Dean Research, Faculty of Health. She is also the Co-Director of the Canadian Center for Advanced Practice Nursing Research (CCAPNR) at McMaster University. As a researcher, Dr. Martin-Misener uses mixed methods to evaluate implementation and outcomes of innovative interdisciplinary team-based models of care in primary health care and long-term care with a particular focus on nurse practitioner and other advanced and specialized nursing roles.  

Dr. Erika Moen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Data Science and The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice with expertise in network analysis, biostatistics, and health services research. She is an NIH-funded investigator who leads a multidisciplinary research team seeking to leverage network analysis to optimize cancer care delivery and patient outcomes. She has developed novel network measures characterizing access to multidisciplinary cancer care, and my long-term goal is to improve equitable access to coordinated cancer care teams with a particular focus on rural-residing populations. 

Apiradee Nantsupawat is an Assistant Professor in Nursing Administration at the Faculty of Nursing, Chiang Mai University. She has experience working as a nurse educator in the university setting, and as well as a registered nurse in a university hospital. She teaches undergraduate courses such as nursing leadership and management, nursing research, health promotion, and fundamentals of nursing. She also serves as an academic and research advisor for graduate students. Her areas of expertise and research includes: health care systems, nursing administration, nurse workforce, nurse and patient outcomes, work environment and classroom research. She is the Assistant Secretary of Research Ethics Committee at the Faculty of Nursing, Chiang Mai University (SIDCER Recognition Program), a committee member of Quality Development in Nursing Education and Innovation, and on the editorial board of the Nursing Journal of Chiang Mai University as well as the Assistant Chair for the Nursing Division. Previously, Dr. Nantsupawat was a Visiting Professor at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Research and Innovation at the Columbia University School of Nursing.  

Jennifer Perloff, PhD, is the Director at the Institute for Healthcare Systems at Brandeis University and Director of Research at the Institute for Accountable Care. With over twenty years of experience in health services research, Dr. Perloff does work on the financing and quality of primary care including the cost and quality of nurse practitioner delivered primary care, the quality of home-based primary care based on provider type and payment models to increase access to primary care. She is also part of a team that recently released an algorithm to identify primary care providers in Medicare claims data. Much of Dr. Perloff’s work looks at population health payment models, including assessment of effective care redesign activities within Accountable Care Organizations. Research in this area includes work on efficiency within surgical episodes of care, the effectiveness of case management and the impact of preferred skilled nursing facility networks on post-acute care costs. In addition to research, Dr. Perloff Chairs the health policy concentration in the Heller School Ph.D. program and sits on many dissertation committees.  

Dr. Tatiana Sadak, PhD, MA, PMHNP, RN, FAAN, FGSA, is serving as a Professor, Deputy Dean, and Director ff the Dementia Palliative Education Network (DPEN) at the Yale School of Nursing. She is a Certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner who specializes in Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurodegenerative Disorders. Dr. Sadak’s research and scholarship are centered around improving health care delivery for individuals living with dementia and their care partners. Her focus is on generating evidence, creating measurement tools, and developing interventions that support clinicians and caregivers alike in preventing avoidable health crises. Her work also aims to help care partners effectively manage the health of those they care for, without sacrificing their own well-being. Dr. Sadak’s contributions within her field have garnered recognition, including her selection as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the Gerontological Society of America. Additionally, she has received awards as a Distinguished Educator in Gerontological Nursing, as a Top doctor/nurse practitioner in psychiatry, and has been acknowledged for an exceptional research manuscript addressing Gerontological Nursing.