Mark Kosinski, MA – Vice President and Senior Scientist
Mark has worked closely with Dr. Ware over the past 17 years, providing analytic support for the SF-36®, SF-12®, and SF-8™ Health Surveys. He has been involved in numerous studies on the measurement of health outcomes, including the development and validation of the SF-36 and SF-12 physical and mental component summary scales, the SF-8, the Asthma Control Test™ (ACT)™, and the Headache Impact Test™ (HIT-6™). In recent years, Mark has focused most of his research efforts on the development and analysis of item banks for computerized adaptive health assessments. He has co-authored over 120 peer-reviewed journal articles related to the development and analysis of patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures, and has contributed to ten manuals and interpretation guides for various PRO measures, including the SF-36, SF-12, and SF-8. Over the past ten years, he has been actively involved in working with the pharmaceutical industry in the analysis of clinical trial data with PRO measures as secondary indicators of treatment efficacy. Mark received his MA in Psychology from Bridgewater State University.
Michelle K. White, PhD – Director and Scientist
Prior to joining QualityMetric in 2008, Dr. White spent eight years as a Research Scientist and Assistant Director of a business unit overseeing the implementation of the GAIN bio-psychosocial assessment. Michelle's work included helping 14 state substance abuse treatment, child welfare, mental health, and justice system programs implement the tool statewide. Her research interests include improved implementation of evidence-based practices across systems of care, behavioral health treatment outcomes research, and reducing health disparities and improving quality of life. She has spent many years working at residential treatment and detention centers, and in various clinical settings. Michelle received her doctorate in Sociology from the University of Illinois (UI), where she focused on population, health, and life course studies, and has since taught at UI and Illinois State University.
Min Yang, MD, PhD – Senior Scientist
Dr. Yang joined QualityMetric in 2006. Min's research interests span the areas of health-related quality of life, health services utilization, pharmacoepidemiology, research methodological designs, and medication adherence/compliance. Her research covers many areas, including women's health, mental health, gastrointestinal diseases, respiratory diseases, and cardiovascular diseases. Min's research and analysis experience includes using clinical trial data, survey data, and claims databases to perform treatment effect analysis, health outcomes analysis (e.g. side effects evaluation), and patient-reported outcome (PRO) analysis (e.g. burden analysis, minimally important difference (MID) estimation for PRO instruments). She is also experienced in qualitative research and survey instrument development and validation. In addition, she has twice received research awards for her presentations at International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR). Min received both a master's degree and doctorate in Pharmacy from the University of Texas at Austin. She also holds a doctorate in medicine from Suzhou Medical College, China, and is trained in surgical oncology.
Regina Rendas-Baum, MS – Scientist
Regina joined QualityMetric as a Senior Outcomes Analyst in 2007. Prior to joining QualityMetric, she was a research assistant at Brown University, where she investigated the use of nonlinear mixed models to study cancer diagnostic accuracy. Regina also worked as a statistician at the Center for Statistical Sciences at Brown University, participating in the planning, data collection, and analysis for several multi-site studies aimed at investigating alternative cancer diagnostic imaging methods. In addition, she served as consulting statistician at the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Regina received both her BS and MS in Statistics from the University of Connecticut.
Aaron Yarlas, PhD – Associate Scientist
Prior to joining QualityMetric in 2008, Dr. Yarlas spent seven years as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, where he taught classes in Research Methods, Educational Psychology, and Cognitive Psychology, in addition to conducting research. The focus of Aaron's research program, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), was to understand how people construct mental representations of the environment, particularly focusing on cognitive models of differential processing for elementary features of information, and the relations that bind these elements. Aaron received his doctorate in Cognitive Psychology from UCLA, and conducted postdoctoral research at the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State University. He has won numerous honors and awards, including an NSF Graduate Fellowship, and has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles and conference presentations.
Aditya Raju, MS - Outcomes Research Analyst
Aditya Raju joined QualityMetric in 2008. He recently graduated with a MS in Pharmacy Administration from the University of Houston, where he also worked as a teaching assistant. His master’s thesis was conducted in collaboration with The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, and was a policy analysis study which measured the impact of institutional guidelines on clinical and economic outcomes of treatment for Anemic Lymphoma patients. Before graduate studies, Aditya received a diploma in Pharmacoeconomics and a BS in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Mumbai, and also worked as a Sales Promotion Officer for Elan Pharma (India) Pvt. Ltd. His research interests include the areas of health-related quality of life, pharmacoeconomics, outcomes analysis, and pharmaceutical marketing.
Jennifer T. Hanlon, MPH – Project Director
Jennifer joined QualityMetric in 2006 as a Senior Consulting Analyst. Her work included managing multiple data sets, conducting classic and modern psychometric validation techniques on patient-reported outcome (PRO) tools, and performing qualitative data research for the development of new instruments. After two years of working as an analyst, Jennifer moved into the role of Project Director, managing larger corporate initiatives involving QualityMetric information technology solutions and consulting science. Prior to joining QualityMetric, she designed and managed national and international PRO studies for the development of tools aimed at measuring treatment satisfaction, patient preference, patient utility, and health-related quality of life. Her work has exposed her to a wide range of disease areas, including schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, asthma, pain, diabetes, obesity, and sexual dysfunction. Jennifer received her master's degree in Public Health from the University of Michigan, which she followed with a two-year fellowship in Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research.