Robert Lucero, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN, FACMI

Dr. Lucero’s program of research focuses on improving health outcomes of vulnerable populations using innovative health systems and informatics approaches. Two prominent themes of his work are: enhancing the quality of care for hospitalized older adults and improving self-management of chronic health conditions among Hispanic, African-American and LGBTQ+ populations. Dr. Lucero’s research is leading the way to inform infrastructure development for data-driven knowledge generation that serves as a model for organizations across the United States to improve the quality of care for hospitalized older adults. The other cornerstone of his research program is developing health information technology (HIT) to promote chronic disease self-management. His research is currently funded by the NIH, AHRQ and the Florida Department of Public Health. 

Dr. Lucero is the Inaugural Audrienne H. Moseley Endowed Chair in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the UCLA School of Nursing and maintains a Courtesy Faculty Appointment at the University of Florida College of Nursing.

Faculty Research

Research: Dr. Lucero's research is leading the way to inform infrastructure development for data-driven knowledge generation that serves as a model for organizations across the United States (US) to improve the quality of care for hospitalized older adults. He is leveraging electronic patient, clinical, and administrative data and data science methods to identify valid, modifiable factors that predict hospital-acquired falls (HAF), which affect annually approximately one million US hospitalized patients. Studies he  published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing and the Journal of Advanced Nursing showed that, in 168 US hospitals, poor nursing care quality was associated with more adverse patient events, including HAF. Using artificial intelligence approaches with electronic health record (EHR) data, Dr. Lucero discovered a set of six new clinical and organizational factors that can predict HAF published in the International Journal of Medical Informatics. His lab also explores the use of registered nurses’ (RNs’) progress notes, or text data, to predict HAF. They were the first to publish in eGEMs that RNs’ notes contain information about clinical, environmental, and organizational factors that can predict fall risk. The other cornerstone of his research program is developing health information technology (HIT) to promote chronic disease self-management. He pioneered and published in Applied Clinical Informatics a HIT design approach, known as Consumer-centered Participatory Design (C2PD), that has been used in multiple HIT development and systematic review articles. Unlike other design approaches, C2PD provides public health and community-based organizations, academic researchers, and commercial designers with a theoretically informed approach that engages consumer throughout the development and evaluation of HIT. C2PD builds on the strengths and resources within a community, promotes a collaborative learning and empowering process, facilitates collaborative partnerships, and incorporates four components of HIT design, namely; user preferences, functions, tasks, and representational requirements, to develop highly usable systems. His lab demonstrated that using the C2PD approach resulted in a highly useful and usable fall prevention self-management system for English- and Spanish-speaking older adults published in eGEMs. He has disseminated further wide-ranging use of the C2PD method in the journals of Informatics for Health and Social Care, Hispanic Healthcare International, and JMIR Research Protocols. This includes creating a mHealth application (app) interface for Hispanic caregivers of persons with dementia to self-manage chronic stress and burden and an app to support African American caregivers of children with chronic asthma and obesity. The lessons he learned developing the C2PD approach are represented in a paper he co-authored in Science Translational Medicine that focuses on using HIT to engage communities to improve health and reduce disparities among populations.
 
Significance: Dr. Lucero's research program focuses on improving health outcomes of vulnerable populations using innovative health systems and informatics approaches. Two prominent themes of his work are: enhancing the quality of care for hospitalized older adults and improving self-management of chronic health conditions among Hispanic- and African-Americans. His research is distinguished by interdisciplinary team science, which bridges nursing, medicine, psychology, computer science, and engineering across the University of Florida (UF), health systems, communities, and other academic institutions.