Ilana Graetz, PhD, is a health services and policy researcher at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Her research aims to leverage health information technology to better understand how care is delivered and to improve patient outcomes. After studying economics, political economy, and demography as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, she found health services research as a field where she could apply her interdisciplinary training to do research that could make a meaningful difference in a person's life. As principal investigator and co-investigator on several federally and institutionally funded studies, her research spans multiple aspects of health information technology, including data analytics, the role of electronic health records in care quality and coordination, and the design of app-based interventions to improve patient-provider communication, treatment adherence, and outcomes.

Dr. Graetz is the principal investigator of two studies funded by the National Cancer Institute aimed at improving outcomes and reducing racial disparities in treatment and outcomes for women with breast cancer. The first one is a two-year study that combines multiple years of patient-reported outcome data with administrative and clinical records to identify modifiable factors associated with Black and White disparities in outcomes for women with breast cancer (1R21CA208161). Her second study is a five-year randomized clinical trial of a web-based app intervention she developed and pilot tested that aims to improve patient-provider communication, medication adherence, and quality of life for women with breast cancer (R01CA218155). She hopes that results from her research will lead to evidence-based changes in clinical practice that improve patients' lives.