Carole Magoffin Joins The CNA Corporation's Institute For Public Research

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA — Lee F. Gunn, President of the Institute for Public Research today announced the hiring of Carole DeSpain Magoffin to help expand the nonprofit research and analysis organization's health services research practice. Magoffin is expected to be an asset to the team in building essential public/private sector partnerships to address the critical challenges to improving the safety and quality of health services.

"Helping solve the nation's health care challenges is an important part of our work," said Gunn, "and having Carole on board to direct the growth of those efforts will benefit not only our organization but our clients as well. Carole's experience, insights and management skills will be a great addition to our team."

Ms. Magoffin has worked for almost three decades in various areas of health services delivery, research, and program development including 11 years as the founding Executive Director of The Center for Clinical Quality Evaluation (formerly the American Medical Review Research Center) in Washington, DC. In the 90's she was Principal Investigator on pioneering research, using new epidemiological approaches and performance measures to evaluate quality care for Medicare beneficiaries, which led to her being named by Health Week as one of 25 leading US health outcomes research innovators and Who's Who in American Women.

She spent the past six years as a Senior Advisor for Quality of Care at the National Pharmaceutical Council in Reston, Virginia where she was responsible for developing and managing strategic Rx safety and quality improvement grants and initiatives. Her work there also included development of high-level policy and scientific partnerships with individuals, organizations, and government agencies from across the spectrum of the health care industry including the areas of pharmacoepidemiology, managed care, health services research, and quality and safety performance measurement.

She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Family & Child Development from Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, and earned a Master of Science in Social Work and Health Policy and Planning, from the University of Iowa's Center for Health Services Research and School of Social Work, Iowa City, Iowa.

Partners in CNA's work are: the Universities of Virginia and Kentucky; the Center for Applied Linguistics; Education Innovations; The EdVenture Group; the Collaboration for Teaching and Learning; Insights Policy Research; Tierra Del Oro Consulting; and SymTech Corp.

"I am extremely excited about having the opportunity to join an organization of such high caliber, whose commitment to serving the public interest, I believe, sets it apart", said Ms. Magoffin. "The breadth and depth of the professional staff is another huge plus. They are crucial to employing an increasing strategic focus for our research as we look to build on our current work on patient safety and improving access to safe, high quality health care."