EVELYN WHITLOCK named chief science officer of Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
Whitlock is an expert in evidence-based medicine and health policy at Kaiser Permanente Northwest in Portland, Ore., as its new chief science officer.
As CSO, Whitlock will be responsible for leading the ongoing development and management of PCORI’s patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research portfolio.
Whitlock, a board-certified preventive medicine physician, is the founding director of the Kaiser Permanente Research Affiliates Evidence-based Practice Center, or EPC, one of 13 officially designated EPCs in the nation.
It operates under a multi-year contract to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to produce evidence syntheses based on systematic reviews, lead methodological development for systematic reviews, and support the increased application of systematic reviews and other evidence-based products into policy and practice.
Whitlock sits on the Methods Steering Committee, among other leadership activities for AHRQ’s EPC program. Whitlock also serves as the principal investigator for multiple contracts for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to provide systematic reviews for USPSTF, which are used to make evidence-based recommendations for clinical preventive services across all ages and health conditions.
She has provided evidence synthesis services to the USPSTF for more than 15 years, as well as to other federal agencies, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute. In addition, she has helped lead scientific resource centers that provide scientific, methodological, and technical support for large national programs such as AHRQ’s Effective Healthcare Program and the USPSTF.
She was a member of the senior faculty of the Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute, one of the first 12 NIH-funded centers for clinical and translational sciences, and helped develop and implement its translation of research into policy and practice program.
In addition to her position at Kaiser Permanente, Whitlock serves as a clinical associate professor in the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University, where she directed its residency program from 1993-1997. She also is an associate professor in OHSU’s Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology.
