Ellen

J.

MacKenzie

,

PhD

Dr. MacKenzie's research focuses on the impact of health services and policies on the short-and long-term consequences of traumatic injury. She has contributed to the development and evaluation of tools for measuring both the severity and outcome of injury which have been used to evaluate the organization, financing and performance of trauma systems and rehabilitation services. Her research has advanced the knowledge of the economic and social impact of injuries and our understanding of how personal and environmental factors influence recovery and return to work.

Selected research accomplishments include:
• A comprehensive effort in the late 1980s to estimate the direct and indirect costs of injury. The Cost of Injury book defined the economic burden of injury and served for many years as the principal resource on the subject for researchers, practitioners and policymakers.
• Widely quoted in support of efforts at regionalization at both the state and national levels, the National Study on the Costs and Outcomes of Trauma Care (NSCOT) showed that one’s risk of dying from a major trauma was reduced by 25% if treated in a trauma center vs. non-trauma center.
• The NIH-funded Lower Extremity Assessment Project (LEAP) showed few differences in outcome for individuals with major limb trauma undergoing limb salvage or amputation. Instead, it underscored the importance of high self-efficacy, good social support, and low baseline measures of depression, pain and anxiety in predicting good outcome.
• In collaborations with colleagues at the Amputee Coalition of America, a self–management program for amputees, Promoting Amputee Life Skills (PALS), was developed and evaluated. Working off the success of PALS, an online self-management program, NextSteps, was designed for trauma survivors (www.nextstepsonline.org).
• With funding from the Department of Defense the Major Extremity Trauma Research Consortium (METRC) (www.metrc.org) was established. The overall goal of METRC is to produce the evidence needed to establish treatment guidelines for the optimal care of the wounded warrior and improve the clinical and quality of life outcomes of both service members and civilians who sustain major extremity trauma. The Consortium is currently involved in 20 multicenter trials addressing a range of different topics, including the prevention and treatment of acute and chronic infections, the efficacy of multimodal, pharmacologic perioperative management of pain, and the evaluation of a new custom energy-storing ankle foot orthosis for survivors of major foot and ankle trauma.