Erika Cottrell, PhD, MPH

Dr. Erika Cottrell is a senior investigator and director of clinical research networks and social policy research at OCHIN. She is also associate professor in the Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Trained as a sociologist and with expertise in qualitative and quantitative methodologies, Erika has a robust research portfolio focused on health outcomes, health policy, social and structural drivers of health, reproductive health, and patient health experiences.

Since joining OCHIN in 2013, she has led Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded studies focused on the impact of state and federal policy on patterns of reproductive care in community health centers. She has also led studies focused on the feasibility of using community and individual-level social drivers of health data to inform decisions about health care performance and payment, developing and testing electronic health record-based tools for integrating social risk screening and action into primary care, and understanding people’s experiences of opioid use disorder and treatment.

Currently, she is the principal investigator of Accelerating Data Value across a National Community Health Center Network (ADVANCE), one of eight clinical research networks in the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet); a multiple principal investigator on the Network for Community-Engaged Primary Care Research (NCPCR), funded by NIH; and the director of health experiences research for the Oregon Clinical & Translational Research Institute (OCTRI) at OHSU, which works to elevate patient voices in clinical and translational research.