Seize the Day

Abstract

THANK YOU SO much to the Selection Committee of the APA and to the colleagues who were kind enough to nominate me. It matters a great deal to me that this award comes from the APA—the organization that has been my academic home and whose members are my closest colleagues. I am truly honored to receive this award and particularly honored to be in the company of the past winners of this award, many of whom were my role models. I want to take this opportunity to thank my major mentors. So many colleagues and trainees have helped me to grow over the years that it is difficult not to name others. But there are 3 individuals whom I feel have had the greatest effect on my career. The reason I pursued an academic generalist career at all was because of the mentorship of Paul Wise, who first demonstrated to me the potential of research to directly impact health care policy. I was professionally transformed by the strength of his vision and became hooked on policy-relevant research. I then had the privilege of working with Caroline Hall, who taught me so much about the hows of research, improved my writing with scrupulous editing, and was a wonderful role model in successfully combining her artistic side (she conducted grant rounds in poetry) and her enormous talents as a scientist. My other major mentor has been Steve Berman, who in the past 20 years has allowed me to spread my wings and taught me so much about how to make research heard by those making policy. I am so grateful to these 3 and to many other colleagues who have taught me so much. Thank you also to my husband Dugan and to our 3 children, Emily, Maddy, and Lauren, for their love and support. I wanted to use my few minutes to deliver an optimistic message. Looking back over the past 25 years in which I’ve been engaged in health services research, I have seen the field slowly evolve in stature and productivity. But its scope and influence has really started to take off in recent years. I believe it is finally the moment for health services, outcomes, or, using newer terminology, translational researchers of the T3–T4 variety, to take a major role in guiding child care delivery and policy in this country. The translational researchers I’m referring to are to the right of this figure describing translation; they are involved in assessing effectiveness in real-world clinical settings