Faculty Profiles

The Clinical Research Methods certificate program is an accredited educational program of the highly-ranked UIC School of Public Health. The faculty’s experience in conducting funded clinical research and in working with clinicians has provided them with an in-depth understanding of the knowledge and skills needed to conduct high quality clinical research.

Learn more about our program director, faculty and instructors.

Elizabeth Calhoun Program Director

Dr. Elizabeth Calhoun is a Professor in the division of Health Policy and Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health as well as the Director for the Center of Excellence in the Elimination of Health Disparities funded by the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities and the Co-Director for the National Cancer Institute Center for Population Health and Health Disparities.  Dr. Calhoun is one of the principal investigators for the Chicago Patient Navigator Research Program and co-chairman of the national patient navigator training program for the NCI, ACS, and CMS navigators programs. Dr. Calhoun has been working to develop a national curriculum for training of patient navigators and to evaluate the curriculum.  Most recently, she co-lead the national leadership summit to develop common outcomes measures for patient navigation across the disease continuum.

Take a look at some programs Dr. Calhoun is working on –
$10M NIH Grant to Study Health Disparities in Breast Cancer
$7.2M Grant to Establish the UIC Center of Excellence in Eliminating Health Disparities

Dr. Calhoun earned her PhD in health administration from the University of South Carolina, Columbia.

Andrew Boyd Research Assistant Professor

Dr. Andrew Boyd is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical and Health Information Sciences in the UIC College of Applied Health Sciences and the Department of Medical Education in the UIC College of Medicine. He is a biomedical and health informatics researcher and has been collaborating on large interdisciplinary research projects since 2002 in the field of biomedical and health informatics. As part of the NIH re-engineering the clinical research enterprise, Dr. Boyd leads the development of the “Honest Broker” mechanism to safely share clinical data between treating clinicians across institutional boundaries. He is also co-investigator on several NIH and DOD proposals. His research interests are currently data visualization and simplification affecting clinical decisions.

Deborah Dobrez Research Assistant Professor

Deborah Dobrez, PhD is a clinical and research assistant professor in the Division of Health Policy and Administration in the UIC School of Public Health. Focusing on health services and outcomes research, Dr. Dobrez has worked extensively on developing approaches to measuring health-related quality of life with funding from the American Cancer Society and the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. With funding from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, the National Cancer Institute and the Department of Veterans Affairs, she has also conducted cost-effectiveness analyses in several clinical areas and evaluated the effects of Medicare reimbursement methodology for rehabilitative services. She has recently taught courses in Managerial Health Economics, Analysis of Secondary Data and Health Economics. Her research interest is health economics. Dr. Dobrez has published her research in Archives of Internal Medicine, Value in Health, Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, Quality of Life Research, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pharmacoeconomics and Oncology among others.

Dr. Dobrez earned her PhD in economics from Indiana University.

Dr. Kim is an Assistant Professor in the division of Health Policy and Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. Dr. Kim is a co-investigator on several NIH funded research projects. Dr. Kim has been working on issues around health disparities and inequality, racial differences in breast cancer outcomes, neighborhood characteristics on cancer outcomes, the effect of access to grocery stores on ovarian cancer survival, and environmental health disparities. Dr. Kim is one of the faculty teaching the health disparities courses. Dr. Kim is currently one of the Institute for Health Research and Policy (IHRP) fellows for 2011-2011.

Sandy Slater Research Assistant Professor

Sandy Slater, PhD, is a research assistant professor in the Division of Health Policy and Administration, UIC School of Public Health and a research scientist in the Health Policy Center, UIC Institute for Health Research and Policy. Her research, which is funded through grants from NIH and private foundations, examines how environmental factors and policies can reduce modifiable risk factors such as physical inactivity, obesity, tobacco use and substance abuse in minority and underserved populations. She has over 14 years experience as a PI or co-investigator on several studies in developing and collecting environmental and policy measures, and public health research and evaluation experience, including expertise and experience in community-based research, childhood obesity, youth physical activity, adolescent substance use and other chronic disease-related issues and public health policy research and evaluation at the federal, state and local levels of government.

Dr. Slater earned her PhD in Health Policy and Administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago.