Regina Greer-Smith, MPH, LFACHE
Community Advisory Board, Community Engagement Core Program
SC CTSI Role
As a member of the Community Advisory Board (CAB), Regina participates in a collaborative process to establish research priorities, set goals, and ensure that our activities and research projects are responsive to the community’s needs and interests. We use the term community broadly and recognize that community may include members of the general public as well as other professionals and experts that work in complementary roles outside of the SC CTSI.
The CAB compliments recommendations made by the SC CTSI’s other advisory councils. Furthermore, the CAB will provide the SC CTSI’s leadership team with guidance and direction with respect to how activities and resources will be prioritized and allocated.
Contact Information
Professional Background
Regina Greer-Smith is president and owner of Healthcare Research Associates, LLC, a community-based organization tasked with building and maintaining collaborations between communities and stakeholders that enable improved healthcare outcomes.
Regina is currently board member and co-founder of Pastors4PCOR, a PCORI-funded program training 20 faith-based organizations in patient-centered outcomes research as well as involved in training and stakeholder collaborations and research engagement consultant on several boards and projects.
She is a winner of the 2013 Health 2.0 PCORI Challenge, where she received an honorable mention in the concept category for designing a program to match patients and researchers for PCOR. The program is entitled The S.T.A.R. Initiative – Strategically Targeting Appropriate Researchers. After 2013, Regina spearheaded and developed “engagement clusters” to provide resources and information to enable research engagement. The S.T.A.R. Initiative was one of 17 world-wide finalist in the innovations program “Ideathon- Inspiring Hope” in 2016. The S.T.A.R. Initiative was named to CenterWatch’s 2018 Top 20 Innovators Changing the Face of Clinical Trials. The S.T.A.R. Initiative has been funded to develop the E3 Mobile Engagement Application to increase minority participation in research and clinical trials.
Regina’s current engagement initiatives includes collaborating with research teams in the U.S. and internationally as well as co-authoring measures and guidance for equity measures in both clinical trials and community-based research programs.
Her primary focus has been towards addressing issues of health disparities and health inequities in vulnerable populations/underserved, minority and communities with elevated risk. Regina has experience in working with physicians and providers in public health and safety net hospitals, along with federally qualified health systems, where vulnerable populations seek care. She has developed programs by leveraging past successes in capacity/coalition building to introducing patient-centered outcomes research to vulnerable populations in order to provide them with the education and training for meaningful participation and partnering with research teams.