Melissa McPheeters, a Senior Scientist in the Translational Health Sciences Division, is an epidemiologist and public health informatician with more than two decades of experience building multidisciplinary teams to address complex problems across health and public health. Dr. McPheeters is an expert in identifying, assessing, and synthesizing evidence for public health and health care, and in the processes by which data from across the health care system and public health can be used to address emerging health threats. She has led the development of methods for evidence-informed medicine, including appropriate use and interpretation of data, with over 100 peer-reviewed publications, multiple book chapters, and many presentations.
Dr. McPheeters has published on methods for stakeholder engagement and patient-centered outcomes research, and she directed the AHRQ-funded Evidence-based Practice Center for a decade before serving as the director of the Tennessee Department of Health Office of Informatics and Analytics. She is experienced in strategic planning and messaging in public health and health care, particularly around issues that require data exchange between public health and the health system. Her recent work has focused on building and leading new informatics initiatives in both public health and health care, with particular emphasis on the appropriate collection, integration and use of complex data across health care and public health systems to track and respond to health issues.
Before RTI in 2021, Dr. McPheeters led an initiative to integrate genomic data into the front lines of clinical care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where her expertise in communicating complex public health and medical information also was deployed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this role, she served on the public health advisory committee, developing statistical modeling reports and educational materials and advising state and local leaders, and on the internal operations modeling team for the hospital. Her work focuses on building systems and multidisciplinary teams to continue to modernize data systems and processes and has ranged in focus from building a state-wide data response to the opioid epidemic to implementing a health system program in genomically informed medicine.
