CHSI Faculty
Jim Bailey, MD, MPH - Professor and Director
Jim Bailey serves as the Robert S. Pearce Endowed Chair in Internal Medicine, Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Director for the Center for Health Systems Improvement, and Executive Director for the Tennessee Population Health Consortium at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. He is principal investigator (PI) for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality-funded Tennessee Heart Health Network which seeks to support and strengthen primary care practices across Tennessee in in their efforts to improve cardiovascular health. He is also PI for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute-funded Management Of Diabetes in Everyday Life (MODEL) study. Dr. Bailey has served as PI for over 10 major grants and health systems improvement research initiatives and has over 70 journal articles, book chapters, and publications. His research appears in many peer-reviewed medical journals, including JAMA, Journal of General Internal Medicine, and Annals of Internal Medicine. His novel, The End of Healing: A Journey Through the Underworld of American Medicine, received a Benjamin Franklin Book Award for popular fiction. Dr. Bailey continues to practice general internal medicine as a primary care physician for adults with complex chronic illness and teaches doctors-in-training. Dr. Bailey’s ongoing research focuses on patient-centered approaches to improve health care delivery, quality of care, and health outcomes for people in medically underserved areas with multiple chronic conditions. He is particularly interested in primary care innovations, building multidisciplinary teams to address the needs of patients with obesity, diabetes, and multimorbidity, and health care delivery approaches that meet the triple aim of simultaneously improving the experience of care, improving the health of populations, and reducing costs.
Email: jeb@uthsc.edu
Phone: 901.448.2475
Susan Butterworth, PhD - Associate Professor (part-time)
Susan Butterworth has a clinical background is exercise physiology and she received her doctoral degree in adult education and training, with a cognate in health promotion from Virginia Commonwealth University. During her 20-year tenure as faculty at Oregon Health & Science University, she founded Health Management Services which won several national awards. Dr. Butterworth's special area of expertise and research is the practical application of behavior change science, such as Motivational Interviewing-based health coaching, to various healthcare settings. She has been the principal investigator or co-investigator on numerous NIH, HRSA and PCORI grants to study the efficacy and impact of health management interventions and has published multiple articles on the theory and outcomes of health coaching. She has been an active member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) since 2002, and developed certification courses on motivational interviewing and health coaching for clinicians, health coaches, and community health workers.
Email: sbutter1@uthsc.edu
Chris Jackson, MD - Assistant Professor
Chris Jackson serves as serves as an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Associate Program Director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC). A native of Augusta, GA, he studied Biology and Sociology at Emory University and received his Doctor of Medicine degree at the Medical College of Georgia. He completed his residency and a year as Chief Medical Resident residency at UTHSC where he joined the faculty in the Division of General Internal Medicine and the Center for Health System Improvement in 2019. Dr. Jackson's research interests focus on evaluating educational and quality improvement efforts to improve primary care practice, patient-centered health outcomes, and delivery of evidence-based medicine.
Email: cjacks67@uthsc.edu
Phone: 901.448.5814
Satya Surbhi, PhD - Assistant Professor
Satya Surbhi is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Health System Improvement in the College of Medicine at UTHSC. Her current work focuses on medication adherence, social determinants of health, care transitions, and comparative effectiveness of therapies, among vulnerable patients with multiple chronic conditions. She has experience in conducting health services research among medically underserved Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries using administrative claims data and electronic medical records, as well as conducting pragmatic randomized controlled trials. Currently, she the principal investigator of two studies, a PhRMA Foundation-funded pilot pragmatic randomized control trial aimed at improving medication adherence by providing full medication subsidy and home delivery of medications for Medicaid super-utilizers, and a University-funded retrospective cohort study to examine the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on disparities in access to care and health outcomes among patients with ambulatory care sensitive conditions. She also serves as a Co-Investigator and lead evaluator for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality-funded Tennessee Heart Health Network which seeks to support and strengthen primary care practices across Tennessee in in their efforts to improve cardiovascular health. She also serves as Director of Measurement and Reporting for the Tennessee Population Health Data Network. Dr. Surbhi has successfully published her research papers in several peer-reviewed journals, such as American Journal of Managed Care, Journal of General Internal Medicine, and Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy. She currently serves as the academic editor for the journal PLOS ONE and invited peer reviewer for more than 15 national and international journals.
Email: ssurbhi@uthsc.edu
Phone: 901.448.4166