Hayden Bosworth, PhD, is the subject of this week’s faculty spotlight. This week he talks to us about the pleasures of teaching at the Clinical Research Training Program, a pilot effort to use mobile phones to improve adherence, and taking taekwondo with his two sons.
How long have you been at Duke? How long have you been at the Division?
I’ve been here 17 years; I came to Duke as a post-doc and quickly transitioned to the faculty in 1997. What does a typical day for you look like? My time is split both between Duke and the VA. I am 7/8th (35 hours) for the VA and 25 hours at Duke. When I’m not spending time on meetings or avoiding email, I try to write as much as I can, both for grant submissions and for a forthcoming book on implementation science and how to disseminate academic research into the real world.
You regularly teach courses at the Clinical Research Training Program. Tell me more about what that’s like. What do you enjoy most about teaching there?
I’ve been teaching the CRTP’s Health Services Research class (CRP 249) for seven years now; I’m also currently teaching a course in the Implementation and Dissemination of Health Care Research (CRP 273) for the second time. What I enjoy most about teaching is working with students. In the class I’m teaching now, we’ve got a really diverse group of individuals, with a sprinkling of a couple third-year students as well as residents, and some junior or senior faculty that are interested in the topic. The class is co-sponsored by the Duke Institute for Health Innovation, so we’ve got students within the Department of Medicine but also from the Schools of Nursing, Global Health, and Surgery. It’s really exciting for me to work with such a dedicated group with such a variety of perspectives.
You’re teaching a course in health services research in the spring. Can you tell me about that course?
CRP 249 provides a broad overview of health services research, with a particular focus on methods. It’s typically made up of third-year medical students and junior faculty and recent career development awardees. It’s aimed primarily at giving students who haven’t had much exposure to clinical research a taste of what that’s like.
What sort of research projects are you involved with at the moment?
I’m involved in a lot of research projects at the moment, but there are two that I’m really excited about. One is a VA implementation grant called the IMPROVE study, which is a five-site implementation study for a telephone intervention for diabetes self-management. But the project I’m most excited about is a pilot grant called CVD MAT that I’m working on with Lynn Bowlby, Larry Greenblatt, and Danielle Zipkin at the Duke Outpatient Clinic. It’s a medication adherence program using mobile technology to help low-income people adhere to medication. We’re going to start very soon. We hope to enroll more than 100 people, follow them over six months, and then hopefully implement it further if the results are promising.
What passions or hobbies do you have outside the division?
I most enjoy spending time with my family, running, cooking and gardening. For the past three years I’ve been taking Taekwondo with my two boys, who are 12 and 6. I’m just at a high blue belt, and my oldest son is almost a black belt.