Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Roberta E. Goldman, PhD is a medical anthropologist who has researched broadly on the use of qualitative methods in health care research, cultural and literacy issues in patient care, physician-patient communication and use of technology to improve patient care and disease management. She is Clinical Professor of Family Medicine at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Adjunct Professor of Society, Human Development and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research expertise lies in qualitative and mixed-methods study designs, and she teaches a course on qualitative methods at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is currently Director of the Evaluation Unit for a HRSA-funded study of primary care clinical site transformation along the Patient-Centered Medical Home model of care delivery. She has participated in numerous multidisciplinary team collaborations for federally-funded health IT projects where she has provided research design planning and oversight for all aspects of qualitative research and application of qualitative findings to design of the electronic programs. She was co-PI for an AHRQ-funded intervention to develop low-literacy educational DVDs to enhance medication safety among older adults. She was PI of a study exploring the combination of qualitative research methods and internet-based disease prevention interventions among Spanish-speaking Latina women in midlife; PI of a longitudinal study investigating the impact of full electronic medical record implementation in a family medicine residency clinic; PI of a study of cancer screening among Latinos, and PI of a community-engaged research study of substance use among Latino and Black youth. She has been a co-investigator for a great variety of other federally-funded studies aimed at disease prevention through behavior change, and improving patient safety, disease management, patient-physician communication and patient self-management.