George Lee Jackson

Areas of expertise: Epidemiology, Health Services Research, and Implementation Science

George L. Jackson, Ph.D., MHA is a healthcare epidemiologist and implementation scientist with a background in health administration.  He joined the faculty of the UT Southwestern Medical Center in February of 2023 as a Professor and Director of the Advancing Implementation & Improvement Science Program in the Peter O'Donnell Jr. School of Public Health.  He is also currently the initial Interim Chair of the new Department of Health Economics, Systems, and Policy in the O’Donnell School of Public Health.  Dr. Jackson has a secondary appointment as a Professor in the UT Southwestern Division of General Internal Medicine and is a member of the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.  In addition to his work at UT Southwestern, Dr. Jackson is a Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Systems Research (HSR) Research Health Scientist who works with the VA healthcare systems in both Durham, NC and Dallas, TX.  He is the Director of the Implementation and Improvement Science Lab/Core at the Durham VA Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation (ADAPT).  Additionally, he is a co-leader of a cooperative effort between the Dallas VA and Advancing Implementation & Improvement Science Program designed to enhance the infrastructure for partnered health services and other research across the Dallas VA and UT Southwestern focused on enhancing the health and healthcare of Veterans in North Texas and across the Nation.

The UT Southwestern Advancing Implementation & Improvement Science Program seeks to further enhance collaborations between the UT Southwestern and affiliated health systems and community partners in the pursuit of common missions to enhance the health and healthcare of the people of North Texas and beyond.  The goal is to develop a system to identify potentially successful projects using implementation and improvement science – which uses rigorous, data-driven research to expand programs and improve a community’s health.

Dr. Jackson’s own research and evaluation efforts focus on the development, testing, and implementation of team-based approaches to address the treatment and prevention of chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and cancer.  He has also evaluated efforts to enhance the organization of mental health care.  As an implementation scientist, Dr. Jackson studies strategies focused on the adoption and spread of evidence-informed practices across large health systems.  He is currently the corresponding principal investigator for three VA program grants focused on the process of identifying, replicating, and spreading innovations across large healthcare systems.  These include the Spreading Healthcare Access, Activities, Research and Knowledge (SHAARK) partnered evaluation of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Diffusion of Excellence program, Dynamic Diffusion Network (DDN) QUERI Program, and Building and Evaluating the Innovation Infrastructure Across the VA Mid-Atlantic Health Care Learning Network partnered evaluation initiative, all funded by the VA Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI).

Dr. Jackson received his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in epidemiology, Master of Health Administration (MHA), and Bachelor of Science in Public Health (BSPH) in health policy and administration degrees from the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He completed an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) pre-doctoral fellowship in health services research at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research and AHRQ post-doctoral fellowship in health services research in the Duke Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research & Development (HSR&D) Center at the Durham VA.  He came to UT Southwestern from Duke University, where he was a Professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences, Medicine (Division of General Internal Medicine), and Family Medicine & Community Health.  He also co-taught evidence-based practice in the Duke Physician Assistant (PA) Program.  Dr. Jackson currently maintains appointments as an Adjunct Professor of Population Health Sciences at Duke and Adjunct Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.