Professor of Health Law, Policy and Management, Boston University School of Public Health

Research Director, Spaulding Rehabilitation Outcomes Center Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital

Dr. Kazis is Professor of Health Law, Policy and Management and Director of the Health Outcomes Unit at Boston University School of Public Health. Concurrently, Dr. Kazis was recently made Research Director for the newly established Spaulding Rehabilitation Outcomes Center at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston.

Dr. Kazis is a national authority on patient reported outcome assessments. He has conducted research projects for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), NIH-National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institute on Aging (NIA), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the National Institute for Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), the Social Security Administration and the Shriners Hospitals for Children Research Program in Boston. He has over 250 publications in peer reviewed journals, including those with Patient Reported Outcomes using legacy measures and medication effectiveness studies. The programs that he directs are dedicated to research and education and includes a multidisciplinary team of investigators.

Dr. Kazis was the recipient of the prestigious Research Career Scientist Award from the Veterans Administration for almost a decade where his work focused on legacy measures including the development of the well-known ‘Veterans Rand 12 Item Health Survey’ for measuring patient reported physical and mental health. Dr. Kazis also was a special consultant to the Office of Quality and Performance in the VA and is currently a consultant to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for the evaluation of the Medicare Advantage Program. For over 25 years, he has been involved in the study of patient reported outcomes and quality of life assessments and is a recognized national leader in this area.

Professor Kazis has collaborated as a lead investigator with the Shriners Hospitals for Children for more than 20 years working with children and adults with traumatic burn injuries. He has been one of the principals in the development of the Burn Outcomes Questionnaires (BOQ), and the development, validation and tracking of the recovery of children with burns.

More recently, Dr. Kazis is the principal developer of the Life Impact Burn Recovery Evaluation, also called the LIBRE Profile. This cutting edge questionnaire measures the social reintegration of burn survivors in the community. Supported by federal funds for its development, this assessment tool uses a form of computer based artificial intelligence, called Computer Adaptive Testing, which asks the burn survivor a short set of questions about their relationships with family and friends, social interactions and such things as work and employment for those who have returned to work. This approach provides a score card of results on metrics that translate to a profile of the needs of burn survivors. This score card can be used to direct and target individualized resources to the burn community. Dr. Kazis has collaborated with the Phoenix Society for the past 7 years in the development of this important tool for use by the burn survivor community.