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Professor of Population Health Sciences, Duke University
Courtney Harold Van Houtven, PhD, MSc, is professor of population health sciences at Duke University and core faculty in the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and a core investigator at the Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation at the Durham VA. She conducts comparative effectiveness and economics research and designs and tests randomized controlled trials with multi-disciplinary research teams to improve outcomes for older adults and their caregivers. She is also interested in improving population-based person-centered measures that reflect independence and high quality of life among older persons with cognitive and/or functional impairment. She has published over 120 articles in top tier health policy, health services and health economics journals such as The Journal of Health Economics, Health Economics, and Medical Care. She tested the effectiveness of a skills training program for caregivers of Veteran patients with functional or cognitive impairment in an RCT (IIR 11-345), called HI-FIVES and implemented an adapted version of HI-FIVES in 8 VA medical centers as a part of the Optimizing Function and Independence QUERI (IP1 HX002258-01). With Dr. Nicki Hastings she is co-PI of a comparative effectiveness study of the quality of care and patient experience in a geriatric primary care model (GeriPACT) compared to usual primary care (PACT) (IIR 15-379). She is project director of the partnered evaluation of the VA Caregiver Support Program with a team from the Durham VA HSR&D and the VA National Caregiver Support Program (PEC-14-272). In an R-01 from The National Institutes of Aging, she is site-PI of the CARE-IDEAS: Caregiver Reactions and Experiences Study (co-PIs, Mor/Wetle, 2017-2021), a care partner and patient survey study linked to the data from the Imaging Dementia – Evidence for Amyloid Scanning Study and Medicare claims. This study examines how a positive Amyloid PET Scan affects patient and caregiver quality of life, subsequent utilization, depressive symptoms, and economic security. Van Houtven is also funded on a R-01 to understand the effects of informal care for persons with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (PI, Coe, NIA, NIH, 20172020).
