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Janet Prvu Bettger
Tel: (919) 684-9380
Office: 3151 Pearson Building
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Janet Prvu Bettger, ScD, FAHA

Associate Professor

  • Brief Bio

    Janet Prvu Bettger, ScD, FAHA is an associate professor and health services researcher at the Duke University School of Nursing and Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI), and a Senior Fellow of the Duke Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development. She serves as a Senior Scientist for the Duke Translational Nursing Institute (DTNI) and is a Fellow of the American Heart Association.

    Dr. Bettger’s research is dedicated to improving health care quality and care coordination for older adults with chronic conditions, particularly stroke and those at risk for functional decline or rehospitalization. She is the principal investigator (PI) on a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) grant to study the comparative effectiveness of rehabilitation and post-acute care services for survivors of an acute ischemic stroke and is the project PI on two NIH funded studies to examine outcomes after inpatient rehabilitation.

    Related to these large database studies is the implementation research she leads on transitional care and interdisciplinary interventions to prevent adverse events. Dr. Bettger is leading a multi-site transitional care health care quality collaborative in Ohio funded by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and the State of Ohio, and is a co-investigator on the RECOVER Trial in China, a randomized controlled trial of early supported discharge and transitional care in rural China.

    Dr. Bettger received her BA from the University of Western Ontario, Canada and her MS from the University of Wisconsin–LaCrosse where she studied community reintegration for stroke and brain-injured patients transitioning from hospital to home. Her doctoral training in Rehabilitation Sciences, completed at Boston University, concluded with an investigation of patterns of functional recovery and factors affecting outcomes in patients transitioning home following acute rehabilitation. While working on her doctorate, she also worked in state government as the director of the Paul Coverdell National Acute Stroke Registry. Dr. Bettger completed post-doctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania with a NIH NRSA research fellowship in neurorehabilitation, a research fellowship at the NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health, and a Switzer Fellowship funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research to study the role of the environment on functional outcomes. She completed additional research training at Duke as a mentored scholar in comparative effectiveness research funded by AHRQ.

    Academic Program Affiliations

    PhD in Nursing Program
    Doctor of Nursing Practice Program
    Master of Science in Nursing Program

    Education

    ScDBoston University
    MSUniversity of Wisconsin - La Crosse
    BAUniversity of Western Ontario

    Professional Certifications

    CTRSCertified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist

    Research Interests

    Dr. Prvu Bettger's areas of research interest include quality of care, care coordination, access to care, transitions in care, organizational change and quality improvement, team-based care, integration of health and social service systems, comparative effectiveness, function and participation outcomes, stroke rehabilitation and recovery, social networks, and social environment.