Awards

Titled Professor - 2023

Leonard Betley Professor of Surgery

About Rachel Patzer

Dr. Patzer is an esteemed epidemiologist and health services researcher with a strong focus on healthcare access, quality of healthcare delivery and healthcare outcomes. Her research investigations center around key areas such as disparities, social determinants of health, community-based participatory research, predictive analytics, healthcare quality, health systems interventions, and health policy evaluations. She has been instrumental in reshaping the transplantation paradigm, advocating for a population health approach to inform quality measures, policies, and interventions.

One of Dr. Patzer’s recent accomplishments includes leading the development of a novel surveillance data registry for kidney disease, known as the Early Steps to Transplant Access Registry (E-STAR). This registry encompasses data from over 30 transplant centers nationwide covering transplant referral and evaluation processes that are not captured in national surveillance databases. Dr. Patzer and her research team has successfully used this resource to develop quality metrics, conduct epidemiologic investigations of the factors contributing to disparities in access to kidney transplantation among patients with kidney failure, and devise pragmatic interventions that have been shown to improve access to transplantation and reduce racial disparities in transplant. Dr. Patzer is Principal Investigator of several active NIH-funded studies of multi-level (dialysis facility-, provider-, and patient-level) interventions to help increase access to kidney transplantation through pragmatic, randomized trials. Notable studies under her direction include the Reducing Disparities in Access to kidNey Transplantation (RaDIANT) expansion study to conduct epidemiologic analyses comparing regional factors associated with early steps to transplant access (NIDDK R01), a pragmatic, multi-level, health systems intervention focused on transplant centers to improve equity in transplant access (NIDDK R01) and the Living ACTS (About Choices in Transplantation & Sharing) study to improve living donor transplantation access among African Americans with kidney failure. Furthermore, Dr. Patzer also serves as an mPI on an R01 from the National Institutes on Minority Health and Health Disparities, where she focuses on examining the impact of a national policy randomizing payment incentives on disparities in home dialysis and transplantation.

Dr. Patzer also holds important roles within the academic research community. She actively participates as a member of the Organization & Delivery of Health Services Study Section (NIH), leads all data activities of the Southeastern Kidney Transplant Coalition as the Data Chair, and serves on the American Society of Nephrology Policy & Advocacy Committee. The results of Dr. Patzer’s work are often published in such high-profile journals as JAMA, Health Affairs, American Journal of Transplantation, and American Journal of Kidney Diseases.

Dr. Patzer became president and CEO of Regenstrief Institute on May 1, 2023.