Rob Cavanaugh, PhD, CCC-SLP is a research analyst at the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics Center (OHDSI) at Northeastern University. He is a speech-language pathologist by training with expertise in stroke and traumatic brain injury rehabilitation. His current work takes place at the intersection of health services research, epidemiology, and data science, primarily using claims and electronic health record data to examine disparities in health care outcomes. His long-term goals are to integrate his clinical background, translational research training, and growing expertise in health services research and data science to conduct and collaborate on high impact research that improves real-world clinical practice in neurorehabilitation.

As a LeaRRn Scholar, Dr. Cavanaugh will be partnering with Intermountain Health under the mentorship of Christine McDonough, PT, PhD, FAPTA. His project will focus on (1) characterizing usual-care speech-language therapy dosage in acute care settings in the Intermountain Health system across priority medical and rehabilitation diagnoses and (2) exploring dose-response relationships under a causal inference framework with respect to system-level outcomes such as length of stay, readmissions, falls, and discharge disposition. This work will inform efficient allocation of therapy resources and facilitate speech-language care standardization in acute care settings.