Rebekah J. Walker PhD

Vice Chair for Research, Population Health and Clinical Analytics

Rebekah Walker portrait.

Rebekah J. Walker, PhD, vice chair for research, population health, and clinical analytics is responsible for growing and developing infrastructure to support research faculty and learners in research and scholarship across the department, as well as, developing clinical analytics infrastructure to support operational efficiency, performance measurement and predictive modeling. 

To accomplish the goals, she coordinates the various research activities in the Department and ensures a robust research infrastructure is in place to support both MD and PhD investigators. This includes:

  1. Fostering an environment that values and support research programs and promoting recognition of research faculty within the Department to make their work visible
  2. Supporting the recruitment, development, and retention of high potential research faculty
  3. Building team science and population health infrastructure to support funding and scholarly productively aligned with the department’s strategic plan
  4. Ensuring robust operational support for research operations and establishing pathways for junior investigators to develop and grow
  5. Serving as a liaison to  major research entities in the Medical School such as CTSI and research committees, promoting collaborative research and scholarship within the larger institution
  6. Overseeing department dashboard research metrics; metrics for desired goal-related outcomes as well as an expanded set of metrics needed to monitor and improve the research operations
  7. Promoting scholarship throughout the Department, including clinical faculty and learners to facilitate answering practice-based questions and publishing

Additionally, she coordinates development and implementation of clinical analytics infrastructure to support clinical activities across Divisions. This includes:

  1. Working with clinical partners to obtain access to clinical data and create dashboards for tracking metrics and progress
  2. Overseeing the statistical support team that conducts analyses to guide evaluation and improvement of clinical programs
  3. Supporting collaborative agreements between the practice plan and organizations aimed to improve clinical effectiveness and population health
  4. Serving on committees and teams organized to improve clinical data access and use, including committees overseeing roll-out of the unified electronic health record system across Buffalo

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