Building on a strong foundation of new knowledge and shared learning about what is and isn’t working in the field of interprofessional practice and education, the National Center looks forward with excitement as it shares plans for the next phase of its Network engagement. 

Connie Delaney, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACMI, professor and dean, University of Minnesota School of Nursing, has been named the knowledge generation lead for the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education.  In this role, Dean Delaney will provide strategic oversight for the National Center’s approach to adding to the knowledge base in the field of interprofessional practice and education through the shared expertise of our growing national network. Delaney served as Associate Director of the Clinical Translational Science Institute –Biomedical Informatics, and Acting Director of the Institute for Health Informatics (IHI) in the Academic Health Center from 2010-2015. She was the first Fellow in the College of Medical Informatics to serve as a Dean of Nursing and was an inaugural appointee to the USA Health Information Technology Policy Committee, Office of the National Coordinator, Office of the Secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Dean Delaney’s leadership builds on a legacy of demonstrated successful engagement of networks toward co-discovery of solutions that add to the knowledge base in a field.  She has extensive experience with virtual workgroups and the development of sharable and comparable data for analytics and big data science. 

Under the leadership of Dean Delaney and building on the big data engagement model utilized in the field of nursing, the National Center team is redefining our approach to knowledge generation through community-building with a renewed focus on engagement and co-discovery of solutions. 

“Dean Delaney has a proven track record across disciplinary boundaries, with academia, in practice and in collaboration with industry, to build the kind of engaged networks that generate lasting results.  We are excited for the knowledge generation team to build on what we’ve learned and plan for our next phase of engagement and learning with our partners” says Barbara Brandt, PhD, director.
 
Other senior members of the National Center’s knowledge generation team include:
 
Jim Pacala, MD, MS, associate head, department of family medicine and community health, University of Minnesota Medical School, is providing leadership as the chair of the Scientific Review Team, leading an interprofessional team of experts in supporting Network teams with research workplan design and outcomes measures. Dr. Pacala has been a member of the National Center’s Scientific Review Team for three years. Dr. Pacala has performed research and published extensively on models of care delivery for geriatric populations and innovative teaching methods.  He is past president of the American Geriatrics Society and is a health services researcher. 
 
Ahmad AbuSalah, PhD, MSc, Director of Clinical Informatics services at the University of Minnesota’s Clinical and Translation Science Institute (CTSI),  is the lead informaticist for the National Center, providing leadership for the informatics and analytical infrastructure.  Dr. AbuSalah leads the design of a robust and secure informatics, data management and analytics infrastructure for the National Center.  He has extensive experience with large-scale health care data integration methods, Informatics Infrastructure Models, Business Intelligence (BI) and value-based models for the support of patient safety, quality of care and cost reduction.

David Radosevich, PhD, RN,  an accomplished epidemiologist and biostatistician, co-founder of the Health Outcomes Institute, co-founder and past director of transplant information services and past deputy director of the Clinical Outcomes Research Center at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, will focus on data and measurement refinements in the National Center’s knowledge generation team.