Cleo A. Samuel-Ryals, PhD

Cleo A. Samuel-Ryals is a health services researcher with expertise in cancer care inequities, palliative and supportive care, and health informatics.  She is particularly interested in disentangling the multilevel sources (i.e., patient-, provider-, and health care system-level) of disparities in palliative and supportive cancer care using mixed methods (i.e., quantitative and qualitative data analysis) and addressing such inequities through system-level approaches that leverage health informatics tools.

Dr. Samuel-Ryals is currently Principal Investigator of Symptom and Healthcare Access Reporting and Evaluation (SHARE) for Supportive Care Equity, a 5-year National Cancer Institute funded K01 study focused on understanding and addressing inequities in symptom management among cancer patients. As part of the SHARE study, Dr. Samuel-Ryals and her team are analyzing data from the UNC Health Registry/Cancer Survivorship Cohort to inform the development of a novel electronic patient-reported outcome tool designed to routinely monitor symptoms and symptom-relevant health care access challenges during cancer treatment.

Representative Courses

HPM 766 - Making Equity a Priority in Health Care Quality: Strategies for Research, Policy, and Practice | Syllabus

Research Activities

• Cancer care
• Diffusion of innovations
• Disparities
• GIS methods
• Health information technology (IT)
• Program implementation and evaluation
• Quality measurement and improvement
• Social determinants of health
• Veterans and military health
  

Key Publications

Developing and Evaluating Composite Measures of Cancer Care Quality. Samuel, C. A., Zaslavsky, A. M., Landrum, M. B., Lorenz, K., Keating, N. L.  (2015). Medical Care, 53(1), 54-64.

Racial disparities in cancer care in the Veterans Affairs health care system and the role of site of care. Samuel, C. A., Landrum, M. B., McNeil, B. J., Bozeman, S. R., Williams, C. D., Keating, N. L.  (2014). American Journal of Public Health, 104.

Area-level factors associated with electronic health record adoption and meaningful use in the Regional Extension Center Program. Samuel, C. A.  (2014). Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, 21(6), 976-83.

Engaging providers in underserved areas to adopt electronic health records. Samuel, C. A., King, J., Adetosoye, F., Samy, L., Furukawa, M.  (2013). American Journal of Managed Care, 19(3), 229-234.

Education

BS, Psychology, University of Miami, 2007

PhD, Health Policy, Harvard University, 2014