Dr. Manisha Verma is the Associate Chair and Director of Research for the Department of Medicine at Einstein Healthcare Network, now part of Jefferson Health. In this role, she provides leadership and overight of clinical research including applied health services research and clinical trials for diverse diseases, with a special focus on advanced liver diseases. She developed the pillar of patient centered outcomes research through several innovative multidisciplinary collaborations within the Institution.  

She has a long track record of accomplishments during her tenure at Jefferson, providing much needed support and stable leadership through multiple changes as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. Her commitment to enhancing and redesigning clinical research processes based on evolving needs of patients and researchers has been unwavering. Her hard work and creative problem-solving skills have garnered her acclaim as a member of the Steering Committee of the American Association for Study of Liver Diseases and offered her the opportunity to serve externally as a Scientific Merit Reviewer for VA HSR (Health Services Research and Development) grants, and an invited reviewer for many esteemed Journals. She is also an Associate Professor of Research at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University; and serves as the Chair of the National Medical Visionary Team for the American Liver Foundation. 

This is one of the largest grants supported by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to conduct multi-site comparative effectiveness research for palliative care delivery. This grant proposal was ranked in the first quartile by independent experts and reviewers and is the pioneering trial in the field of palliative care research within Hepatology. This is a 2-arm cluster-randomized controlled trial, comparing care delivered by palliative care specialist (i.e., consultative palliative care [PC]) versus palliative care intervention delivered by the trained hepatologist-led PC intervention. We developed a training program in collaboration with Stanford University, tailored to primary palliative care for hepatologists. Adding an educational and training component to the intervention overcomes the barrier of limited knowledge and access to palliative care in the real world. 19 Clinical Centers as recruiting centers scattered across the US were randomized 

The study will enroll 940 patients and more than 400 caregivers.  The inbuilt formative evaluation involving qualitative interviews of providers and recipients is conducted by the Qualitative experts at the University of Alabama. 

Development & Testing of Multimedia Patient Education (MaPE) for Routine Inpatient Care of Cirrhotics

This study developed and validated educational videos for patients with liver diseases, with the primary goal of enhancing patient knowledge about liver diseases.