Susan Heil

Managing Researcher

As a managing researcher at AIR, Susan Heil is responsible for research and planning tasks and management of projects that evaluate federal policy, implement programs, and transform systems of care. Dr. Heil has assisted federal agencies, including SAMHSA/CSAT, SSA, NIH, and CMS, with strategic planning, performance assessment, performance improvement, and evaluation of designated program areas; as well as conducted needs assessments, strategic planning, and technical assistance delivery to state-level grantees receiving these agencies’ discretionary and non-discretionary grant awards.

Dr. Heil leads large-scale technical assistance contracts, research on public health issues and outcomes, campaign research, comprehensive literature reviews, and ensures translation of key findings into informed study design choices, action plans, or methodological approaches for subsequent phases of research and evaluation projects. She served as project director and technical lead for a $16 million, five-year project to support the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in their initiatives to enhance state capacity for performance-based management of publicly funded substance abuse treatment services; as well as technical assistance to Access to Recovery Round 1 grantees.

Dr. Heil’s technical expertise includes data modeling, methodological design, measurement and quantitative analysis; integration of secondary data through database linkage algorithms; literature review and technical writing; policy and program analyses; facilitation and synthesis of expert panel meetings; technical consultation to state grantees; and presentations of research and project plans to stakeholders. Her research experience encompasses a variety of public health domains and project areas. She also has state-level research experience, having previously been employed by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services as a senior data analyst. In addition, she has various publications and professional presentations to her credit.

Expertise
Health
Healthcare Analysis and Evaluation
Quality Measurement and Patient Safety
Substance Use Disorders

Ph.D. and M.S., Social Psychology, Kansas State University; B.A., Psychology & French, North Central College

Contact Susan Heil

+1.301.592.8600
Related Work

State Policy Study on the Impact of State Medicaid Coverage of Abortion on People Seeking Care

To learn what happens to prices, patients, and procedures in states permitting or discontinuing the use of state Medicaid funds for abortion care, AIR gathered data from abortion providers and stakeholders in three states: two authorized to continue and one that discontinued state Medicaid coverage of abortion care. ...

Using Telehealth to Meet the Challenges of the Opioid Epidemic

17 Dec 2020
COVID-19 dramatically accelerated the use of telehealth in behavioral healthcare, In the context of surging overdose-related mortality rates, the need to remove barriers to the equitable delivery of evidence-based care for treating opioid use disorder (OUD) in a telehealth setting has never been more urgent. Colleagues across AIR and IMPAQ ...
Image of Susan Heil discussing opioid treatment

Expanding Medication-Assisted Treatment to Curb the Opioid Epidemic

14 Jun 2018
Expanding local access to medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is a critical step towards improving the lives of people with opioid use disorder and starting to curb the epidemic. Susan Heil talks about the barriers to adopting MAT and what can be done to assist its adoption, especially in rural areas with ...

Opioid Misuse, Overdose, and Death: A National Public Health Emergency

14 Jul 2017
Increasing rates of opioid misuse, overdose, and death in America represent a complex public health emergency that merits widespread public and private resources and solutions. This brochure describes AIR's response to this public health crisis.

Expanding Medications for Opioid Use Disorder in Rural Primary Care

Oklahoma is among the states hardest hit by a combination of national trends in nonmedical uses of opioid prescription drugs, past-year heroin use, and opioid-related mortality. AIR recently led and evaluated a project for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality—Increasing Access to Medication-Assisted Treatment Among Rural Providers—to train rural ...

Care Coordination Measure Development

Care coordination involves deliberately organizing patient care activities and sharing information among all of the participants concerned with a patient's care to achieve safer and more effective care. For the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, AIR developed, tested, and validated the Care Coordination Quality Measure for Primary Care (CCQM-PC), ...

Technical Support for Opioid Treatment Program Certification

The misuse of and addiction to opioids—including prescription pain relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl—is a national crisis. Between 2003 and 2018, AIR supported the information management and data analytic needs of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration related to certification of opioid treatment programs. ...

Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Network Center

The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) is an NIH-funded initiative to develop and validate patient reported outcomes (PROs) for clinical research and practice. As the initial PROMIS network center, AIR has been at the forefront of developing and implementing PROs to inform research and clinical care. ...

Integrating State Administrative Records To Manage Substance Abuse Treatment System Performance

11 May 2007
This guidance document was developed with input from a technical advisory group of state/federal representatives and field researchers, and describes the utility and practice of integrating the information available in state agency data sets with information on clients of alcohol and other drug abuse services. ...