SUMMARY
Gladys B. Asiedu, Ph.D., is a health services and healthcare delivery researcher who studies ecological perspectives and how contextual components of healthcare delivery affect individuals, stakeholders and the healthcare process.
Dr. Asiedu's qualitative research uses a mix of conceptual frameworks in family science and systems theory, clinical and community engagement approaches, and innovative methodologies. These frameworks inform clinical care improvements and help researchers develop interventions to reduce variations in health outcomes faced by groups who are understudied in research.
Dr. Asiedu has made significant contributions to improving clinical care processes and procedures, including:
- Advances in spine surgery safety.
- Improved autopsy-related communication, leading to increased autopsy rates.
- Expansion of teleneonatology healthcare delivery systems.
Focus areas
Linking factors related to patient health and health systems
Dr. Asiedu's research uses ecological and systems perspectives. These frameworks provide focus on contextual components affecting both individuals and the healthcare process. The frameworks encompass policies, treatment history, demographics, and social determinants of health such as physical, social and cultural contexts.
Dr. Asiedu's work outlines theoretical frameworks for multilevel approaches that combine behavioral and contextual components. These frameworks present opportunities for developing interventions for clinical events and decision-making that consider relational, familial, social, structural and situational dimensions.
Dr. Asiedu's research uses collaborative participatory methods to examine and understand interactions between multiple stakeholders and systems. Stakeholders include employees, patients and families. Systems include social context, healthcare teams, processes, and institutional policies and programs. Dr. Asiedu hopes her work helps improve healthcare delivery by better understanding these interactions.
Addressing differences in workplace, patient and community settings
Dr. Asiedu's research includes priority initiatives to improve belonging and extensive work in reducing health disparities. Her collaborative work in this area has led to implementation and evaluation of several culturally tailored interventions for understudied groups, including immigrants, refugees and people with limited English proficiency.
This work has focused on:
- Family-centered, home-based coaching.
- Physical activity.
- Healthy eating.
- Implementing a crisis and emergency risk communication intervention.
Dr. Asiedu's work also explores factors that contribute to successful recruitment of people from understudied groups into therapeutic cancer clinical trials.
Her research also includes characterizing the lived experiences of employees, trainees, learners and pediatric patients who are members of understudied populations. These characterizations help her develop evidence-based strategies to support and strengthen belonging and reduce discriminatory behavior they may face.
Using methodological approaches to improve practice
Dr. Asiedu specializes in innovative qualitative research designs and analytic methods. These include participatory approaches, visual research designs, and rapid evaluation and assessment methods. Her participatory approaches, such as community-engaged research, help ensure culturally appropriate methods in studying and understanding specific populations and clinical spaces.
Dr. Asiedu's visual research designs include using photo elicitation and video reflexive ethnography. This is a novel approach to recording routine clinical practices and then discussing the process and areas for improvement with participants. For example, she has used video reflexive ethnography to find ways to improve post-transplant conferences for pathology teams.
Dr. Asiedu's methodological work includes applying a community-engaged research approach to collaboratively implement and evaluate a crisis and emergency communication intervention for refugees and immigrant populations. She also has used a multimethod approach to implement and evaluate the acceptance, use and integration of teleneonatology healthcare delivery systems and models of care in community hospital settings.
Her current methodological work includes using photo elicitation to create narratives of understudied groups in interventional cancer treatment trials. This work is used for patient and community education and social marketing to accelerate the recruitment of understudied groups into cancer trials.
Significance to patient care
Discriminatory and biased behavior can affect healthcare outcomes. Understanding the many factors that affect health, from individual behaviors to larger systems, is key to improving care. Dr. Asiedu's research helps uncover these situations so changes can be made in healthcare systems. Dr. Asiedu works closely with care teams, patients and communities to make sure everyone has the chance to participate in clinical trials.