Karen Crotty

Karen Crotty is a seasoned expert with 18 years of experience in health services research conducting systematic and comparative effectiveness reviews, health technology assessments, and knowledge translation. In her current roles as Program Director and Senior Research Scientist, Dr.Crotty leads a program of research focusing on health systems and implementation research and evaluation. This includes leading a five-year contract for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to determine whether the FDA’s tobacco regulatory science research portfolio is serving its intended purpose of growing the field of experts working in tobacco regulatory science and guiding FDA’s regulatory activities, actions and communications.

Dr.Crotty specializes in systematic review methodology and recently led work for the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) to conduct a focused update of the ASAM National Practice Guideline for The Use of Medications in the Treatment of Addiction Involving Opioid Use. She focuses on translating scientific evidence into practice, and her work involves synthesizing and translating complex scientific findings into succinct and actionable products.

Prior to her current role, Dr. Crotty has served as a co-investigator and project manager on several Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Effective Healthcare Program projects, including systematic reviews on health literacy, arthritis, colon cancer screening and prevention, depression, otitis media, and maltreatment of children. She designed a novel stakeholder engagement approach to prioritize future research needs for the integration of mental health/substance abuse into primary care and led a 5-year contract with the Office of Communication and Knowledge Transfer at AHRQ to facilitate and accelerate the dissemination and implementation of AHRQ’s evidence-based products, tools, and research findings into the health care system.