Allen A. Greiner, MD, MPH

Professional Background

K. Allen Greiner, MD, MPH is the Nason Family Endowed Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) in Kansas City, Kansas. He grew up in Topeka, Kansas and received his undergraduate education at Brown University. He attended medical school and completed residency training at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He is a practicing family physician and is the Medical Officer for the Kansas City, Kansas, Wyandotte County Unified Government Health Department. Since 2002 he has been one of two primary faculty advisors to the Jaydoc Free Clinic, a medical student run clinic for the uninsured in Kansas City. He directs the Kansas Patients and Providers Engaged in Prevention Research (KPPEPR) Network. This primary care practice-based research network serves as an important research laboratory for health studies and projects in rural and urban safety-net clinics across the state of Kansas. Over the last 18 years the KPPEPR Network has been the primary recruitment setting for five separate National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 intervention studies including a current study testing strategies for improving cancer survivorship care. He has also directed the community engagement program in Frontiers, the KUMC Clinical Translational Science Institute. Through this program he leads efforts to expand community-based research and to assure a strong infrastructure and community input into KUMC’s bioscience activities. He has received federal and foundation grant support to study health information technology, health disparities, chronic disease management, health literacy, and patient health risk behavior in rural and underserved community settings.

• BA, Anthropology, Brown University

• Board Certification, American Board of Family Medicine
• Medical Doctor (MD), Kansas Board of Healing Arts
• Medical Physician & Surgeon , Missouri State Board of Registration for the Healing Arts

• Community Campus Partnerships for Health, Member, 2006 - 2018
• National Rural Health Association, Member, 2003 - 2018
• Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine, Member, 2000 - 2018
• American Public Health Association, Member, 1998 - 2018
• North American Primary Care Research Group, Member, 1998 - 2018
• American Academy of Family Physicians, Member, 1995 - 2018
• American Medical Association, Member, 1995 - 2018

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Research

Overview

I have conducted NIH funded behavioral research work for nearly twenty years. Most of this work has been conducted in primary care settings and in clinics caring for the underserved (urban and rural). I have conducted important pragmatic trials of novel health behavior interventions using the construct of “implementation intentions.” Implementation intentions are a theoretically informed mechanism for helping individuals specify the “how,” “when,” and “where” they will move forward and operationalize different health behaviors. In recent studies, we utilized an implementation intentions approach to develop a computerized tool for use in primary care to boost colorectal cancer screening. Most recently, I am serving as a Co-PI on the Kansurvive NCI funded R01 (w/ J Klemp) to test methods for improving cancer survivorship in rural primary care practices. I am also serving as a Co-PI on a Radx-Up NIH funded supplement (w/ M Castro, B Crawford and E Ellerbeck) to the University of Kansas Medical Center Clinical Translational Science Institute that is testing strategies to enhance COVID-19 testing in vulnerable populations in 10 geographically dispersed Kansas counties.