It’s difficult to pinpoint the experience that set me on my path to becoming an anthropologist and ethnographer. Maybe when I took my first anthropology class in high school. Or my first garbage can archeology dig in sixth grade. Or when I was nine and invented my own culture, the “Mountainees.” 

What all of these experiences have in common is one human trying to understand the relationship between other humans and their behaviors: What drives them? How does their action serve their objectives? And does all of that effort actually lead to a thriving life and environment? 

These are questions I continue to ask today in my current role. While sitting in the VA’s telemedicine hub for critical care, I wonder: “Why did you indicate sepsis for this patient in your data system? How does it serve the patient? The clinicians? The healthcare system? How does that action serve to improve care for that particular patient and for the population of patients you care for?”

For me, implementation science starts with these basic building blocks: questions that help us critically examine how people, the things that surround them, and the systems within which they operate all interact as they strive to improve people’s health and wellbeing.

What excites me about the Implementation Science Center is that it presents an incredible opportunity to build an interdisciplinary community that can work collaboratively, and creatively, to improve the health and well-being of millions of people, while also developing fresh questions and methodologies that can serve this larger goal. 

I believe deeply that it will take interdisciplinary teams that have a passion for thinking creatively together that will ensure people have access to the latest evidence-based research in pursuit of health and wellbeing.

At the University of Iowa, the Implementation Science Center is creating the space to do just that.