Rowena J. Dolor, MD, MHS

Rowena Dolor, MD
Director, Duke Primary Care Research Consortium

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Dr. Dolor did her medical training and internal medicine residency at Duke University Medical Center. She completed the Ambulatory Care/Health Services Research fellowship at the Durham VA Medical Center (VAMC) in 1996 and obtained her Masters in Health Sciences degree in Biometry from the Duke University School of Medicine in 1998. Dr. Dolor was a staff physician in the Ambulatory Care Service at the Durham VA Medical Center and Research Associate at the Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care at the Durham VAMC from 1995 to June 2012.

The focus of her research pertains to primary care clinical and outcomes research. She acts as an investigator of several federally-funded projects conducted in community-based settings on hypertension, diabetes, patient-provider communication, immunization, and osteoarthritis. Since 1997, Dr. Dolor has been the director of the Primary Care Research Consortium (PCRC), a network of primary care practices in the Duke University Health System and outlying communities. The PCRC has participated in more than 100 studies on hypertension, hyperlipidemia, asthma, otitis, obesity, diabetes, depression, anticoagulation, and vaccines. The Duke PCRC is a registered network in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) PBRN registry and a member network within the North Carolina Network Consortium, (NCNC, http://ncnc.unc.edu) and the Meta-network Learning and Research Center (Meta-LARC, https://pbrn.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/docs/page/Meta-Larc.pdf).

Dr. Dolor served as a member of the AHRQ PBRN Resource Center Steering Committee from 2006-2010 and the NAPCRG PBRN Conference steering committee in 2012. She has chaired in the NAPCRG PBRN annual conference from 2013 to 2016.Her work in the Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) involves directing collaboration between Duke researchers and PCPs on community-based PBRN projects, and serving as a co-investigator on a CTSA supplement grant entitled Partnership-driven Resources to Improve and Enhance Research (PRIMER, www.researchtoolkit.org). From 2011- 2014, she was co-chair of the CTSA PBRN Collaboration Workgroup, and a member of the Community Engagement Key Function Committee, the CTSA Strategic Goal 4 Combined Networking Group committee, and the CTSA Comparative Effectiveness Research Key Function Committee (CER KFC).

She serves on the University of Cincinnati Clinical and Translational Science and Training (CCTST) External Advisory Board. As part of the CER KFC, she co-authored a paper entitled “A National Strategy to Develop Pragmatic Clinical Trials Infrastructure” which lists five recommendations designed to lead toward a sustained national infrastructure for pragmatic trials — developing the network, enhancing community engagement, addressing regulatory challenges, advancing information technology, and developing research methods.

In the fall of 2014, Dr. Dolor joined Vanderbilt as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine within the Division of General Internal Medicine. As a research faculty member, her role is to assist in the formation of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Clinical Research Network, a PBRN comprised of community sites in the mid-Tennessee region. In addition, she is involved in the Mid-South Clinical Data Research Network, a PCORnet awardee, responsible for building the partnership with the community practices for comparative effectiveness studies that will utilize the electronic health records/information system infrastructure of the CDRN.

Since 2008, she has acted as a co-investigator of the MURDOCK Study Community Registry & Biorepository, helping to advise the research team on collaborating with community practices and organizations for recruitment, study implementation, and dissemination.