Donna B. Jeffe, PhD

Biography

Dr. Jeffe is a Professor of Medicine, Director of the Medical Education Research Unit (MERU) in the Office of Education at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM), and Director of the Health Behavior, Communication, and Outreach Core, an affiliated resource of the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS) and Siteman Cancer Center. Dr. Jeffe has expertise in quantitative and qualitative research design and data analysis, education program evaluation, and survey development, validation, and psychometrics. She is the Principal Investigator (PI) or co-investigator of many federally funded research projects. She has an active educational outcomes research program, including institutional research under the auspices of the WUSM Office of Education and a national cohort study supported by the National Institutes of Health National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIH NIGMS).  Since 2008, Dr. Jeffe has had continual funding from NIGMS as the PI for this national cohort study to identify interventions that promote the diversity of the biomedical research and academic-medicine workforce among physician-scientists.  In addition to her medical education research, Dr. Jeffe studies social support, personal, and situational factors associated with health-risk/health-promoting behaviors, quality of life (QOL), and emotional adjustment to disease. Her clinical research has focused mainly on QOL in breast cancer patients/survivors and cancer prevention and control in underserved groups, with funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Breast Cancer Stamp Fund. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Jeffe contributed substantially to developing and validating numerous questionnaires used by investigators worldwide. For example, three hearing-related QOL questionnaires for school-aged children, adolescents and a parent-proxy measure for preschool-aged children with hearing loss (HEAR-QL^TM), and two questionnaires assessing physicians’ and other health professionals’ knowledge and attitudes about obstructive sleep apnea in adults and children (OSAKA^TM and OSAKA-KIDS^TM), have been translated into more than 20 languages for clinical and research use. Findings from studies using these questionnaires have great potential for improving the QOL of patients with hearing loss and improving the quality of care for patients with obstructive sleep apnea.

Additional Titles

• Director, Health Behavior, Communication, and Outreach Core
• Director, Medical Education Research Unit (MERU), Office of Education

Related Links

• Research publications