Meet the Team
Principal Investigator

Timothy Reistetter, PhD, OTR, FAOTA
Dr. Reistetter is Professor and Associate Dean for Research in the School of Health Professions at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio (as of January 2019). He is widely recognized for his leadership in health services research within rehabilitation in general, and in occupational therapy specifically. Through Dr. Reistetter’s K12, K01, and subsequently his currently funded Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality R01, he has brought the discussion of how to measure rehabilitation geographic regions to the forefront. Specifically, he is translating methodology from the hospital-centric research conducted at Dartmouth College and implementing these approaches to a rehabilitation context to define rehabilitation geographic services areas. Prior to Dr. Reistetter’s seminal work, any researchers examining geographic variations in rehabilitation quality of care were limited to the hospital-based regions, called Hospital Service Areas, even if they did not adequately reflect the context and environment in which rehabilitation was provided across the country, as this was the accepted approach. Thus, it has been Tim’s work, which has focused on developing and evaluating Rehabilitation Service Areas that has provided health services researchers with the necessary tools to effectively measure variations in service delivery, access, and quality.
Co-Investigators

Alex F. Bokov, PhD
During Dr. Alex Bokov’s Ph.D. training in physiology, he delved further and further into statistics and bioinformatics. He went on to do post-doctoral training in the Department of Population Health Sciences at The UT Health San Antonio. Part of this time, he worked after hours to complete a second post-graduate degree, an M.S. in Applied Statistics. His cross-disciplinary training, further augmented by over a decade of practical programming and database experience, gives him the unique ability to help bridge the gap between biology, statistics, and scientific computing, helping facilitate more powerful experimental design, valid statistical analysis, and biologically relevant interpretation of results. In January 2014, he transitioned the Clinical Informatics Research Division where he built our flagship EMR data warehouse and, as Deputy Chief, helped Directors build a top-notch biomedical informatics team.

Yong-Fang Kuo, PhD
Dr. Kuo is the Don W. and Frances Powell Professor in Aging Research. Her research assesses patterns of care, treatment toxicities, and health outcomes using a variety of large data sets. She also examines health care delivery focused on hospitalist care and its impact, and the use and effectiveness of primary care provided by nurse practitioners in communities and nursing homes. In addition, she studies effectiveness and safety of opioid and benzodiazepine substitutes, and the effect of annual wellness visits on dementia care. Her research is widely published in medical and health services research journals. Kuo’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. As a biostatistician, she is awarded as the principal investigator or serves as the director of Biostatistics and Analysis Core for several center grants funded by NIH and Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. She has been a biostatistics mentor for more than 100 trainees including junior faculty, pre-doc and post-doc fellows. Her expertise is in the analyses for comparative effectiveness research, pharmacoepidemiology, and health outcome studies.

Chih-Ying “Cynthia” Li, PhD, OTR
Chih-Ying “Cynthia” Li, PhD, OTR is an Associate Professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy at the UTMB School of Health Professions. Dr. Li received her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Occupational Therapy from National Taiwan University and her Doctor of Philosophy in Health and Rehabilitation Science from Medical University of South Carolina.
Dr. Li is a NIH-supported career development awardee (K01) from NICHD/NCMRR, 2021 Early Career Research Excellence Award recipient from American Occupational Therapy Foundation and 2021 Learning Health Systems Rehabilitation Research Network (LeaRRn) Scholar. Dr. Li also serves as a core faculty at the UTMB Center for Recovery, Physical Activity and Nutrition (CeRPAN) and an Associate Scholar at the UTMB Clinical Translational Sciences Award (CTSA). The focus of Dr. Li’s research has delivery, transition, services use patterns and quality measures such as hospital readmissions and successful community discharge across post-acute settings.

Sanghun Nam, PhD, OT
Sanghun Nam is a Research Associate at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He earned his Ph.D. in Occupational Therapy from Yonsei University, South Korea. With 4 years and 10 months of clinical experience in neurological rehabilitation, Dr. Nam specializes in rehabilitation treatment and the cognitive and physical health of stroke patients. His research utilizes advanced statistical tools and big data. Dr. Nam has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and is a licensed Occupational Therapist in South Korea.

John D. Prochaska, DrPH, MPH
Dr. Prochaska is a population health scientist with training in social and environmental epidemiology, social and behavioral health principles, and health disparities. His interests lie in understanding the pathogenic and salutogenic features within neighborhoods, communities, and other populations that drive positive and negative health and health-related outcomes and health disparities. These include social, political, and environmental sources of health risk and protective factors, as well as behaviors related to health promotion. My application of quantitative and mixed-methods research, action-based research, geographic information systems (GIS), and systems thinking provides a broad range of tools for understanding these issues, as well as translation of findings generated through these research approaches to a broad array of audiences. I have previous experience teaching broad academic audiences on these topics, as well as on areas related to health disparities, social and environmental determinants of health, and dissemination and implementation research. This experience includes leading formal graduate courses, guest lecturing, one-on-one mentoring and training, community-engaged dissemination efforts, and other educational and dissemination modalities.

Susanne Schmidt, PhD
Dr. Schmidt’s research focuses on disparities in access to care and outcomes with particular focus on cancer and the impact of the social determinants of health. I have a Ph.D. in Applied Demography with training in quantitative research methods with a focus on health outcomes and experience in evaluation. In addition, I served as the Evaluation Manager for the Evaluation and Implementation Team of our Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from 2013-2016 and have been co-directing the evaluation efforts for our CTSA since 2016. In addition to my commitment to evaluation and health services research, I have sought opportunities to acquire advanced training in clinical and translational research, resulting in a 2-year Mentored Research Career Development (KL2) award from our CTSA. For this, I have focused on formalizing my training in program evaluation and examining access to care for vulnerable patients with cancer. In addition to my evaluation and research activities, I have been the Course Director for “TSCI 5074: Data Management, Quality Control and Regulatory Issues” since 2019.
Scholars

Ashlyn Fisher, MS
Ashlyn is a first-year Doctor of Occupational Therapy student at UT Health San Antonio. She has a B.S. in Movement Science with a minor in Spanish for the Health Professions from Texas Chrisitan University. She also completed her M.S. in Exercise & Sport Science with a concentration in Health & Rehabilitation Sciences from Texas State University. Ashlyn currently serves as the secretary of a non-profit for individuals with neurological illnesses & injuries. She hopes to work in a neurological rehabilitation setting after she graduates.

Yeonju Jin, OT
Yeonju Jin is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Occupational Therapy at Yonsei University, South Korea, with a strong clinical background and a growing expertise in health research focusing on adult and older populations. Jin’s academic and professional journey has been defined by a commitment to improving health outcomes through both clinical interventions and data-driven research. Jin began her career as a licensed occupational therapist after earning her associate degree in occupational therapy from Choonhae College of Health Sciences in 2015, followed by a bachelor’s degree from Kyungnam College in 2018. She spent over six years at Rehabilitation Hospital in South Korea, where she provided occupational therapy to adults and older adults with neurological conditions such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s dementia. Her graduate studies focus on the health outcomes of adult and older populations, with a particular emphasis on using big data to explore the influence of social determinants of health, rehabilitation service access, and cognitive health.