Kristin L. Carman, Vice President, Health Policy Research, Health and Social Development Program at American Institutes for Research (AIR)

Kristin L. Carman, a vice president at AIR, leads a team of over 70 health services research professionals conducting research on issues of public importance in health care quality, access, financing, comparative effectiveness research, patient and family engagement, health systems improvement, public deliberation, and health-related communications.

Dr. Carman's work developing and evaluating information for use by patients and consumers, purchasers and health care providers includes a specific emphasis on explaining evidence-based information for use in decision making. She is well regarded for her work assessing the performance of health care organizations and determining how best to enable improvement in organizational performance. In addition, Dr. Carman is a nationally known expert on reporting health care quality and delivery information and the development and testing of effective data displays of complex information (paper and Web-based). She has developed products, materials and technical assistance to support organizations and communities to engage members of the public in their health and health care.

In addition to her continuing work supporting consumer engagement for the Robert Wood Johnson’s Foundation’s Aligning Forces for Quality project, Dr. Carman currently leads two groundbreaking consumer engagement projects funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The first is to develop, implement and evaluate a Guide to Patient and Family Engagement in Health Care Quality and Safety in the Hospital Setting, an evidence-based resource with specific strategies for hospitals to implement and use to develop effective partnerships with patients and family members. Second, she leads a large, randomized controlled deliberative methods demonstration to expand public input into AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program and to advance the field of public deliberation. She is also a nationally recognized expert in qualitative methods and mixed methods use in health services research.

Prior to joining AIR, Dr. Carman was at RTI International, where she conducted studies on the assessment of health plans and reporting of quality information, and led evaluations of these efforts. She worked as a legislative analyst for the Illinois General Assembly for many years before entering graduate school