Interests:

Community-based health informatics, data visualization, health inequities, women’s health, and health promotion

Background:

• Former BIME National Library of Medicine Biomedical Informatics Fellow
• Former UW Tacoma faculty in the School of Nursing and Healthcare Leadership
• Current Consumer Health Informatics Lead at the MITRE Corporation

Research:

• User-centered design of informatics tools for patients, healthcare providers, and public health practitioners
• Policy and governance impacts on health IT, health outcomes, and biomedical research
• Interoperability promotion in post-acute care and other settings via HL7 FHIR implementation guide development

Representative publications:

Kim KK, Backonja U. Digital health equity frameworks and key concepts: a scoping review. J Am Med Inform Assoc. doi:10.1093/jamia/ocaf017

Kong HK, Zainab F, Turner AM, Bekemeier B, Backonja U. Trends in and Effectiveness of Infographics for Health Communication: A Scoping Review. Health Commun. Published online April 17, 2024. doi:10.1080/10410236.2024.2342595

Cullen R, Heitkemper E, Backonja U, Bekemeier B, Kong HK. Designing an infographic webtool for public health (a Featured Article in a special issue on developing visualizations for lay audiences). Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA). 2023;ocad105. doi:10.1093/jamia/ocad105.

Lor M, Yang NB, Backonja U, Bakken S. Evaluating and Refining a Pain Quality Information Visualization Tool with Patients and Interpreters to Facilitate Pain Assessment in Primary Care Settings. Informatics for Health and Social Care 2023;48(4):353-369.

Chen AT (co-first author), Backonja U (co-first author), Cato K. Integrating health disparities content into health informatics courses: a cross-sectional survey study and recommendations. JAMIA Open. 2023;6(1):ooac101.

Bekemeier B, Heitkemper E, Backonja U, Whitman G, Schultz M, Jiang Y, Baquero B, Turner AM. Rural public health data challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic: The case for building better systems ahead of a public health crisis. Journal of Public Health Management & Practice. 2023;29(4):496-502. doi: 10.1097/PHH.0000000000001726.

Backonja U, Park SE, Kurre A, Yudelman H, Heindel S, Schultz M, Whitman G, Turner AM, Marchak NT, Bekemeier B. Supporting rural public health practice to address local-level social determinants of health across Northwest states: Development of an interactive visualization dashboard. Journal of Biomedical Informatics. 2022;129:104051.

Backonja U, Taylor-Swanson L, Miller AD, Jung SH, Haldar S, Woods NF. “There’s a problem, now what’s the solution?”: Suggestions for technologies to support the menopausal transition from individuals experiencing menopause and healthcare practitioners. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) [2021;28(2):209-21. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocaa178

Fox S, Menking A, Eschler J, Backonja U. Modules Over Models: Participatory Explorations of the Menstrual Tracking Application. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (ToCHI) Special Issue on HCI and the Body: Reimagining Women’s Health. 2020; 27(4): article 22 (24 pages). https://doi.org/10.1145/3397178

Lordon RJ, Mikles SP, Kneale L, Evans HL, Munson SA, Backonja U, Lober WB. How Patient-Generated Health Data and Patient Reported Outcomes Affect Patient-Clinician Relationships: A Systematic Review. Health Informatics Journal. 2020 (18 pages). doi:10.1177/1460458220928184

Eschler J, Menking A, Fox, S, Backonja U. A systematic evaluation of mobile menstruation tracking applications as a tool for health literacy. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing (CIN). 2019; 37(12):638-646. doi: 10.1097/CIN.0000000000000559.

Petersen C, Austin R, Backonja U, Campos H, Chung AE, Heckler EB, Hsueh P-Y, Kim KK, Pho A, Salmi L, Solomonides A., Valdez RS. Citizen Science to Further Precision Medicine: From Vision to Implementation. JAMIA Open. 2019; 3(1):2-8. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamiaopen/ooz060

Backonja U, Hall AK, Painter IS, Kneale L, Lazar A, Cakmak M, Thompson HJ, Demiris G. Comfort and attitudes towards robots among young, middle-aged, and older adults: A cross-sectional study. Journal of Nursing Scholarship. 2018;50(6):623-633. doi: 10.1111/jnu.12430

Pollack A, Backonja U, Miller AD, Mishra S, Khelifi M, Kendall L, Pratt W. Closing the Gap: Supporting Patients’ Transition to Self-Management after Hospitalization (peer-reviewed conference publication). Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’16): 5324-5336. doi:10.1145/2858036.2858240

Backonja U, Chi NC, Choi Y, Hall AK, Le T, Kang Y, Demiris G. Visualization approaches to support healthy aging: A systematic review. Journal of Innovations in Health Informatics. 2016;23(3). doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/jhi.v23i3.860

Roberts K, Boland MR, Pruinelli L, Dcruz J, Berry A, Gerogsson M, Hazen R, Sarmiento RF, Backonja U, Yu KS, Jiang Y, Brennan PF. Biomedical informatics advancing the national health agenda: The AMIA 2015 Year-in-Review in clinical & consumer informatics. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 2016 [ahead of print]. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocw103.

Schliep KC, Mumford SL, Johnstone EB, Peterson CM, Sharp HT, Stanford JB, Chen Z, Backonja U, Wallace M, Buck Louis GM. Sexual and Physical Abuse and Endometriosis: Findings from the ENDO Study. Human Reproduction. 2016 [ahead of print].

Backonja U, Robledo CA, Wallace ME, Flores KF, Kiely M. Reproductive health knowledge among African American women enrolled in a clinic-based randomized control trial to reduce psychosocial risk, Project DC-HOPE. Women’s Health Issues. 2016 [ahead of print]. doi: 10.1016/j.whi.2016.03.005.

Hartzler AL, Taylor MN, Park A, Griffiths T, Backonja U, McDonald D, Wahbeh S, Brown C, Pratt W. Leveraging cues from person-generated health data for peer matching in online health communities. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 2016;23(3):496-507. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocv175

Hartzler AL, Weis B, Cahill C, Pratt W, Park A, Backonja U, McDonald D. Design and usability of interactive user profiles for online health communities. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (ToCHI). 2016; 23(3): Article 15. doi:10.1145/2903718

Backonja U, Hall MK, Thielke S. Older Adults’ Current and Potential Uses of Information Technologies in a Changing World: A Theoretical Perspective (article). International Journal of Aging and Human Development. 2014;80(1):41-63. doi: 10.1177/0091415015591109.

Backonja U, Royer HR, Lauver DR. Young Women’s Reasons to Seek Sexually Transmitted Infection Screening. Public Health Nursing. 2014;31(5):395-404. doi: 10.1111/phn.12125.

Backonja U, Kim K, Casper GR, Patton T, Ramly E, Brennan PF. Observations of Daily Living: Putting the Personal in Personal Health Records. Proceedings of the International Congress on Nursing Informatics. 2012;2012:6.