Research Assistant

Overall Description:

• Assist physician, who is Professor of Medicine at University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, with various research tasks.
• Accomplish varied tasks:
  • Recruiting patients for a study
  • Organizing meetings / sending correspondence
  • Helping to draft grant proposals including proofreading, creating figures and documents, and literature searches
  • Doing basic data analysis in Excel or similar programs

Start and End Dates:

• Looking for someone to start June 2026 to continue for 2 years. 

Perk:

• Guaranteed to earn authorship on at least 1 publication; prior assistants were each first author on at least 1 paper and co-author on 2 others.
• You will be involved in multiple projects affording you the opportunity to author multiple papers.
  • Patient safety / medication safety

Research Themes :

• Anticoagulation - Use of blood thinning medicine (known as anticoagulation) for the prevention of stroke and other clotting disorders.
• Epidemiology and health services-based research, including enrollment and collection of data prospectively as well as leveraging existing data to examine health outcomes.

Ideal candidate:

• Someone who will have completed initial school work (bachelors or masters) by June 2026 although exceptions could be made for person with sufficient availability throughout the day
• Remote worker – all projects will be conducted remotely for the foreseeable future
• Someone who does not need health or other benefits through this position (I am preferring to hire as a contract worker)
• Looking for 10-20 hours per week with ideal person being someone who is flexible to work at different times during the day but make use of downtime for exam preparation or preparation of applications for medical/graduate school.
  • $25-35 depending on experience  

Compensation:

 Hours:

• Mostly business day
•  Some evening and weekend flexibility helpful around grant submission timeline OR to help with patient recruitment 

Specific Projects:

• STORY-AF 
• Project Description
  • We have interviewed and created storytelling videos of African American patients describing their success with starting or resuming blood thinning medication (i.e anticoagulation) and begun evaluating videos with a community advisory board
  • We are measuring starts and continuance of anticoagulation among African American patients off the medication after they view videos of African American patients talk about taking the medication 
• Themes
  • Health disparities
  • Example - filming exemplar African American storytellers (through Zoom) discussing their success with starting or resuming blood thinning medicine (i.e., anticoagulation) to prevent stroke. After filming, we will distribute these videos to other African American patients 
• Roles 
  • Helping to prep data
  •  

• SUPPORT-AF  
• Project Description
  • We sent alerts to providers of patients with high risk of stroke urging them to have a conversation with their patients about taking anticoagulation
  • We have completed enrollment and are analyzing use of anticoagulation after having these conversations 
• Themes
  • Digital crumbs – We are examining what providers do electronically (review notes, order meds, send messages) after receiving an alert 
• Roles
  • Organizing data 
  • Prepping manuscripts of work

• ADEPT
• Project Description:
  • UMass is one of 14 sites studying diagnostic errors.
  • Currently collecting data through physician review of charts 
• Themes
  • Health services – the overall project examines how providers navigate diagnostic decision-making
• Roles
  • Coordinating chart review assignments for 5 physician-reviewers
  • Screening charts for eligibility 
  • Corresponding with central study leadership 
  • Preparing reports / PowerPoints as needed to report findings / progress

• Benefits and Burdens of Anticoagulation- Alzheimer’s Association
• Project Description
  • Analysis of Medicare Nursing Home data to see if anticoagulation can slow the progression of dementia 
  • Testing conversation aid for discontinuation of anticoagulation

• Themes
  • Epidemiological research with retrospective data
• Roles 
  • Organize meetings 
  • Basic data analysis
  • Recruiting nursing home providers to test conversation aid