Karen Crotty

Karen Crotty, Senior Director of RTI’s Center for Public Health Methods, oversees three multifunctional programs focused on health economics, evidence synthesis, and advanced public health methods, including data visualization, modeling, dashboarding, data linkage, and research portfolio analysis. She has strategic and operational accountability for the direction and performance of the Center, including meeting financial and non-financial goals.

Dr, Crotty has almost 25 years of experience in public health and health services research, specializing in evidence synthesis, knowledge translation, stakeholder engagement, clinical guideline development, and research portfolio analysis. She has led contracts for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the State of Washington’s Healthcare Authority, the U.S. Defense Health Agency (formerly TRICARE), and a number of professional societies. Examples of her work include an annual research portfolio analysis to determine whether the FDA’s tobacco regulatory science research portfolio is serving its intended purpose of impacting regulatory activities; an analysis of PCORI’s database of engagement in health research literature to help PCORI better understand the science of engagement landscape; and collaboration on research to assess the uses and accuracy of Gen AI for evidence synthesis. 

Dr. Crotty has conducted dozens of systematic reviews and health technology assessments since 2009, including recent reviews on the effectiveness of telehealth for disease monitoring and prevention and the comparative effectiveness of pharmacological and psychological treatments for borderline personality disorder. She designed a novel stakeholder engagement approach to prioritize future research needs for the integration of mental health/substance abuse into primary care and led a 5-year contract for AHRQ to facilitate and accelerate the dissemination and implementation of AHRQ’s evidence-based products, tools, and research findings into the health care system.