Message from the Chief



The mission and vision of the Rutgers RWJMS Family Medicine and Community Health Research Division is to develop and sustain a vital and productive research environment that fosters collaborative, trans-disciplinary approaches to promote person centered health by improving quality of care and addressing health-related disparities. Our team of community-engaged, primary care researchers are working with vulnerable populations at the intersections of community health, primary care and specialty care. Input from patients, clinicians and the community is at the heart of our work. There are eight core faculty members in the Research Division with well-developed primary care research portfolios focused on patient centered care and outcomes and understanding barriers and facilitators to dissemination and implementation of evidence based primary care interventions. 

Core Faculty

Benjamin Crabtree, PhD
Jeanne Ferrante, MD, MPH
Shawna Hudson, PhD
Jesse King Jensen, PhD
Yanping Jiang, PhD
Elizabeth Luth, PhD
Denalee O'Malley, PhD, LSW
Dan Treglia, PhD, MPP

Affiliated Faculty

Jennifer Amico, MD
Ping-Hsin Chen, PhD
Manuel Jimenez, MD, MS, FAAP
Ann Nyugen, PhD
Maria Pellerano MA, MBA, MPH

Research division faculty have chronic disease expertise in behavioral health (Hudson, O'Malley), cancer (Hudson, Crabtree, Ferrante, O'Malley, King Jensen), obesity (Ferrante), diabetes (Crabtree, Ferrante, Hudson), and content foci in health equity, aging (Luth), substance use (O'Malley), housing and income instability, homelessness (Treglia). Affiliated faculty members have expertise in women’s health (Amico, Chen), intimate partner violence (Chen), health literacy and developmental disabilities (Jimenez) and community health (Jimenez, Pellerano).

Our Department of Family Medicine and Community Health’s Research Division has been consistently among the top Family Medicine Departments in the country in NIH funding by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research. Division research efforts have received major funding through federal and foundation sources, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institute on Aging (NIA), Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). This funding provides support for a well-established, ongoing line of dissemination and implementation science research that uses mixed methods to examine strategies to enhance quality of care in primary care practices. In addition to our faculty, the Research Division also employs 4 core staff members with expertise in: (1) quantitative data collection/management (e.g., medical record abstraction, automated survey data collection using REDCap, and Qualtrix) and analysis using SAS and SPSS; (2) qualitative data collection (e.g., depth interviews, field observations, participant observation, focus groups) and analysis using ATLAS.ti; and (3) practice facilitation.

Shawna V. Hudson, PhD
Research Division Chief