Robin Newhouse

Robin Newhouse, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN is the dean of the Indiana University (IU) School of Nursing and an IU distinguished professor. Her research focuses on health system interventions to improve care processes and patient outcomes. She has published extensively on health services improvement interventions, acute care quality issues and evidence-based practice.

Dr. Newhouse was appointed to the Methodology Committee of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) in 2011, serving six years as chair of the committee, and is now serving as the committee’s vice chair. After election to the AcademyHealth Board in 2013, she held multiple leadership positions including chair of the Board until 2020 when she completed her service. Dr. Newhouse was inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame in 2014 and received the American Nurses Credentialing Center President’s Award in 2015. Newhouse received the Distinguished EBP Trailblazer Award from the Fuld National Institute for Evidence Based Practice (EBP) in 2019 for her role in development of two EBP models now used nationally and internationally. She has served on multiple Institute of Medicine (IOM) and National Academy of Medicine (NAM) committees. Dr. Newhouse was elected as a member of (NAM) in 2017.

Dr. Newhouse is currently serving as the lead investigator for Indiana University’s Grand Challenge: Responding to the Addictions Crisis. This Grand Challenge is a $50 million initiative in partnership with the State and major health care systems in Indiana to reduce substance use disorders, the number of people that die because of an opioid overdose, and babies born exposed to substances that experience neonatal abstinence syndrome.

Dr. Newhouse is also principal investigator of two current studies. The first study tests the effectiveness and implementation of a Screening Brief Intervention Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) toolkit to identify people that use substances and get them the help that they need across settings that range from critical access hospitals to academic health centers. The second study will disseminate the SBIRT toolkit across 17 hospitals in a phased approach. In 2020 her team completed an assessment of the workforce available to address the addictions crisis across the State and developed and tested a web-based resource for clinicians to use to refer people that use substances to outpatient treatment when indicated.