The Director of the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Robert Otto Valdez, will be sharing his vision for AHRQ and the challenges and opportunities facing the U.S. healthcare system to provide high quality, equitable and safe health care. He will discuss how factors such as the use of data and measurement, a refocus on patient safety after the COVID-19 pandemic, persistent healthcare disparities, the aging of the population and climate change are impacting the future of healthcare. Dr. Valdez will share with us how Minnesota’s research community can contribute to improving healthcare for the nation.

Director Valdez is internationally recognized as an expert in health services research, the U.S. healthcare system, and health policy analysis. The event is co-hosted and sponsored by the Center of Clinical Quality, Outcomes, Delivery and Evaluation (C-QODE), co-directed by Drs. Chris Tignanelli and Schelomo Marmor. Event partnership includes The University of Minnesota Medical School, Carlson School of Business, School of Public Health, Department of Surgery, and Department of Otolaryngology. Several University Centers joined C-QODE in the event partnership including C-QODE, Center for Health Learning Systems Sciences (CHLSS), Institute for Health Informatics, Global Surgery and Disparities Program and the Carlson Medical Industry Leadership Institute. This event comes at the heels of some changes in the Leadership structure at the Medical School. Dr. Tolar, the Dean of the Medical School, recently announced that Drs. Melton-Meaux (Director of CHLSS) and Tignanelli (co-Director of C-QODE) would join the Medical School leadership group as Senior Associate Dean for Health Informatics and Data Science and Associate Dean for Data Science “to ensure we are able to continue to support the school and faculty at a high level, are positioned to meet the needs of the state and community, and can pursue the strategic goals we have for the School and University.” This visit gives the University of Minnesota’s Medical School, the School of Public Health, and the Carlson School of Management and other organizations, an opportunity to continue as research leaders in healthcare quality and advance novel solutions to healthcare technology, informatics, policy and public health’s most vexing problems.