Kathryn Hyzak, PhD

What is your training and professional background?
I earned my bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees all through The Ohio State University, and  I am now a Research Assistant Professor—Provosts’ Fellow in the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation in the College of Medicine.

What do you study & why?
Most interventions developed across disciplines never get used in the ‘real-world,’ meaning that patients may not be receiving optimal interventions that could improve their health outcomes. As an implementation scientist, my goal is to develop and rigorously test implementation strategies that accelerate the uptake, use, scalability, and sustainment of clinical interventions. Specifically, my research focuses on the implementation of interventions developed for individuals living with traumatic brain injury across rehabilitation and community-based settings.

What should people know about your research?    
In implementation science, we are always working with two interventions: The “thing” (i.e., the clinical intervention) and “how we do the thing” (i.e., implementation strategies). While it can make research a bit more complex, incorporating implementation science as early as possible in the intervention development and testing process can pay off in dividends down the road by expediting the pace at which interventions move from efficacy testing to implementation. This will ultimately improve health equity and health outcomes at the population level.

What do you like to do in your free time?
I love discovering and eating at new restaurants, exercising, and hiking with my husband and our French bulldog.