Sara Malone’s research is dedicated to ensuring that all children have access to the highest quality of care. She leads a team that designs and evaluates interventions to enhance health care and improve outcomes for children admitted to the hospital, particularly in acute and emergency situations.

A licensed clinical social worker, Malone has worked in a variety of pediatric hospital settings. Her experiences in those settings continues to inform her research, which is aimed at understanding how teams, particularly those within pediatric health-care systems, can best implement and sustain evidence-based programs and practices to improve the delivery of health care. Her research sits at the intersection of implementation science — the study of how to get evidence-based interventions, practices and policies into routine use — and systems science — the study of the properties and interactions of complex systems such as a hospital system. 

Malone earned her doctorate in public health sciences and her master’s degree in social work at Washington University’s Brown School. At WashU School of Public Health, she co-leads the Health Design and Impact Lab and is a member of the Center for Public Health Systems Science. She has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Defense. 

Areas of Focus:

  • Evidence-based care delivery
  • Implementation science
  • Systems science

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