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Get the most interesting and important stories from the University of Pittsburgh.The health care system is complex and can be difficult to navigate. Receiving a life-changing diagnosis such as cancer can only make the process harder. Teresa Hagan Thomas saw this when her mother — a self-sufficient woman who had twice been a cancer caregiver and whose daughter is expert in health care self-advocacy — struggled to navigate the system after her own cancer diagnosis.
“If that was the case for my mom, what happens to patients who are not trusting of the health care system, don’t have a good relationship with the oncology team or don’t have the needed resources or education?” asked Thomas, associate professor of health promotion and development in the School of Nursing.
For a solution, she and her colleagues turned to an unlikely technology: video games.
The interactive game she developed uses simulations of cancer patients navigating challenges and facing decisions, helping real-life patients develop the skills they’ll need to advocate for themselves.
At the same time, the team is collecting evidence on which elements of this “serious gaming” are most effective. Their findings will help researchers optimize gamified interventions in other patient populations.
With an eye on rapidly bringing cutting-edge research to the clinic, Pitt researchers like Thomas are developing new and innovative ways to ensure communities across the region have equitable access to health care. Three of those are highlighted in the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Research’s 2024 Annual Report and excerpted here.
Meet more impactful innovators
Browse the report website to explore stories that highlight the people behind Pitt’s research enterprise, which reached $1.2 billion in 2024.
Making research relevant and representative
Sirry Alang’s work tackles medical mistrust and its impact on health inequities. Alang’s research emphasizes that factors like a history of substance use, homelessness, incarceration and minority status often correlate with poorer health outcomes, not due to individual choices but due to structural injustices and a lack of trust in the medical system.
This mistrust is often rooted in negative experiences and the lack of diverse representation in the design and implementation phases of health programs and policies. Alang, associate dean of equity and justice and associate professor of health and human development in the School of Education, finds true structural change requires centering the lived experiences of those marginalized by these systems.
To do this, Alang and colleagues developed a tool to allow researchers to assess their own roles in creating meaningful partnerships and help community partners assess their own engagement.
“In order to bring meaningful structural change, we have to ground our research and our practice in the lived experiences of those who have been harmed by structural injustices. This work requires a focus on their voices,” Alang said.
[Read more about Alang’s efforts to ensure a person’s health doesn’t depend on their circumstances.]
Renee Cloutier (pictured) wants to shrink the significant lag times between making discoveries in the lab and seeing those discoveries put into practice in the real world, focusing on substance use and overdose protection.
“There are a lot of major changes that have occurred since COVID that are uniquely relevant to the opioid treatment program context,” said Cloutier, an assistant professor in the School of Medicine. “This includes flexibility around methadone, take-home doses and telehealth that makes implementation research in the opioid treatment program context especially important.”
Working with Pennsylvania’s Centers of Excellence for Opioid Use Disorder, Cloutier is working to integrate and leverage existing infrastructure and support systems to make treatment more readily available and relevant. Rapid implementation and adapting to current needs is crucial for bringing effective health care solutions to the front lines of the opioid crisis.
“By centering data and resources around patient needs and how support provider teams meet those needs, we can achieve the common vision of improving the quality and impact of the patient care,” said Cloutier.
[Learn more about Cloutier’s work to ensure opioid treatment uses cutting-edge science.]
Photography by Tom Altany