SUMMARY
Jennifer L. Ridgeway, Ph.D., is a health services researcher and implementation scientist who uses qualitative and mixed-methods research to address complex care-delivery challenges. Dr. Ridgeway advances learning health systems through rapid, practice-embedded evaluation and implementation strategies that reduce burden and speed up the adoption of evidence-based care.
Dr. Ridgeway focuses on remote-delivered, technology-enabled and collaborative models of care that expand access to patient-centered, compassionate care close to home for people with cancer and chronic conditions. She is interested in the intersection of quality improvement and implementation science to achieve rapid improvement while solving persistent healthcare challenges.
Focus areas
- Engagement and rapid, practice-embedded evaluation methods. Dr. Ridgeway engages patients, caregivers and clinical teams in formative evaluation to design and implement feasible and acceptable interventions. She leads rapid, embedded evaluations to accelerate implementation. Dr. Ridgeway also applies learning-health-system principles, including routine data and feedback loops, to support scale-up, sustainability and continuous improvement.
- Patient-reported outcomes, treatment burden and health drivers in care. Dr. Ridgeway conducts research to inform the development of patient-reported outcome measures and clinical tools. She also studies methods for integrating these methods into clinical practice to inform patient care. Dr. Ridgeway contributes to community-engaged and participatory approaches to research, including methods to involve community members in research and to evaluate whether interventions are implemented to promote optimal health for everyone.
- Fidelity, adaptation and implementation tracking. Dr. Ridgeway develops pragmatic methods to assess fidelity and to identify, track and interpret intervention and implementation adaptations to examine mechanisms of change. Dr. Ridgeway is an expert in process evaluation and implementation facilitation. She uses these approaches to guide iterative refinement and support implementation as intended.
- Technology-enabled, remote-delivered and collaborative care models at scale. Dr. Ridgeway designs and evaluates remote-delivered, technology-enabled interventions and collaborative care models. This includes attention to workflow integration and health drivers that influence adoption and reach. She also studies networks that connect academic medical centers with community-based care. Dr. Ridgeway's work includes network-based models that support cancer survivorship care in primary care settings and multidisciplinary monitoring and patient support in home settings.
Significance to patient care
Dr. Ridgeway works with patients, community members and medical teams to make care more focused on patients, teamwork and the highest level of health for everyone. Her research helps care teams measure outcomes that matter most to patients. Dr. Ridgeway also studies how medical teams work together across specialties and settings to ensure patients can get the best care close to home.