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HealthPartners Medical Group title: Family Physician, Assistant Medical Director
Other offices: Study Section member, various NIH and Agency for Health and Research Quality committees since 1994; member and former chairperson of Minnesota Diabetes Advisory Committee of the Minnesota Department of Health; Co-author of Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement clinical guidelines on treatment of diabetes, hypertension, lipid disorders, obesity, and primary prevention of chronic disease; editorial boar member of Diabetes Care, Annals of Family Medicine, and several other journals; member of American Diabetes Association's Professional Practice Committee, which writes the national Diabetes Care Recommendations.
Joined HPRF: 1993
Education: MD, Case Western Reserve University; MPH, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Family Medicine Residency, Duke University Medical Center
Research highlights: After completing his family medicine residency training at Duke, Dr. O'Connor worked in a remote rural clinic on the Navajo Reservation, where some of the 50 patients he saw each day arrived on horseback. The clinic had no electricity or phone, and he needed a translator (who served as a Navajo "Code Talker" in World War II) for nearly all visits. Dr. O'Connor tried to learn a few things from several medicine men who were his patients. There was no phone or electricity at the clinic, and it was a challenge to take care of his 25 patients with diabetes. His first research project was a study of whether his 25 diabetes patients did worse than the 600 diabetes patients at a local hospital clinic. The results showed no difference in quality of care at the two clinics. The paper reporting the findings was his first publication and won an award from the U.S. Public Health Service, presented by then-U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, M.D.
Research interests/expertise: Chronic disease prevention and treatment, diabetes care, electronic medical records.
Current projects: National Institutes of Health (NIH)-Funded Projects: 1) Principal investigator (PI) on Personalized Clinical Decision Support to Reduce Cardiovascular Risk Project (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute [NHLBI]); 2) PI on the Pediatric Hypertension and Obesity Project (NHLBI); 3) PI of the Personalized Physician Learning (PPL) Intervention to Improve Hypertension Care, which delivers Web-based interventions to physicians treating hypertension, 4) PI of the Reducing Clinical Inertia in Diabetes Care, a randomized trial designed to decrease the clinical inertia of physicians treating patients with uncontrolled hypertension, 5) Investigator on the Action to Prevent Cardiovascular Complications in Diabetes (ACCORD) clinical trial, 6) PI of SimCare, a Web-based simulated learning intervention to improve diabetes care (AHRQ), 7) Co-PI of Keep Active Minnesota, a study designed with interventions to help older adults keep physically active, 8) PI in the Diabetes and Depression study to evaluate the relationship between depression care and diabetes care (NIDDK); 9) Co-PI on the Standardized Diabetes Training Trial (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases).
Curriculum Vitae
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