Office of Research & Development |
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Dr. Alex Sox-Harris, the director of HSR&D's Substance Use Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (SUD-QUERI) at the Palo Alto VA Health Care System, has received the HSR&D Health System Impact Award.
Sox-Harris, an HSR&D Research Career Scientist awardee, was recognized for his work on validating and refining addiction-related quality measures for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, which has been central to the development of 15 SUD-related quality measures used by VA to evaluate the effectiveness of its programs.
Throughout his career, Sox-Harris has shown that conducting small, well-focused projects that are faster and directly responsible to a stakeholder's questions and challenges can have great impact on moving evidence-based research into practice in a timelier manner. At present, Sox-Harris is developing several metrics to be used to assess quality improvement efforts among the 63 VA substance abuse residential rehabilitation treatment programs.
The HSR&D Health System Impact Award honors HSR&D and QUERI-funded research that has had a direct and important impact on clinical practice or clinical policy within the VA health care system. Sox-Harris is the first recipient of this award, which will be given annually.