Research Interests
Patient-centered communication, medical decision making, symptom management, quality of life, gynecologic oncology, palliative care, artificial intelligence
Overview
Dr. Pozzar is an oncology nurse scientist with experience in inpatient medical, inpatient palliative care, and outpatient primary and acute care nursing. Her research is focused on developing scalable digital health interventions that promote the delivery of high quality, patient-centered cancer care.
Currently, her projects include developing and testing an electronic health record-integrated intervention to promote patient-centered communication in ovarian cancer care. She is also assessing the feasibility of large language models to identify symptoms documented in narrative visit notes and leveraging real-world data to predict and mitigate adverse symptom experiences during cancer treatment.
Dr. Pozzar’s research has been funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research, the American Cancer Society, the National Palliative Care Research Center, and the Oncology Nursing Foundation. She completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School and was an inaugural Society for Medical Decision Making Fellow in Medical Decision Making. She also holds a Certificate in Human-Centered Healthcare from the Parsons School of Design and a Certificate in Applied Biostatistics from Harvard Catalyst.
Areas of Expertise
Supportive oncology research, intervention development, health informatics, human-centered design, randomized behavioral trials, qualitative and mixed methods research
Publications
Pozzar RA. Integrating remote symptom monitoring, person-centered analytics, and artificial intelligence to advance precision health symptom science in oncology. Semin Oncol Nurs. 2025 May 13;151901. PMID: 40368651.
Pozzar RA, Tulsky JA, Berry DL, Batista J, Barwick P, Lindvall CJ, Dykes PC, Manni M, Matulonis UA, McCleary NJ, Wright AA. Usability, acceptability, and barriers to implementation of a Collaborative Agenda-Setting Intervention (CASI) to promote person-centered ovarian cancer care: Development study. JMIR Cancer. 2025 Mar 10;11:e66801. PMID: 40063817.
Pozzar RA, Enzinger AC, Howard C, Tavormina A, Matulonis UA, Campos S, Liu JF, Horowitz N, Konstantinopoulos PA, Krasner C, Wall JA, Sciacca K, Meyer LA, Lindvall C, Wright AA. Feasibility and acceptability of a nurse-led telehealth intervention (BOLSTER) to support patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis and their caregivers: A pilot randomized clinical trial. Gynecol Oncol. 2024 Sep;188:1-7. PMID: 38851039.
Pozzar RA, Xiong N, Mazzola E, Wright AA, Goff BA, Tulsky JA, Hammer MJ, Berry DL. Health-related quality of life, patient-centred communication and self-efficacy in ovarian cancer: A mediation analysis. BMJ Support Palliat Care. 2024 Jan 8;13(e3):e863-e866. PMID: 36376058.
Pozzar RA, Hammer MJ, Paul SM, Cooper BA, Conley YP, Chen LM, Levine JD, Miaskowski C. Associations between distinct state anxiety profiles, exposure to stressful life events, resilience, and coping in patients with gynecologic cancers receiving chemotherapy. Semin Oncol Nurs. 2023 Aug;39(4):151431. PMID: 37164885.
