Education and Training

Dr. Rac received her PhD at the University of Toronto, Institute of Medical Sciences (MD stream). Before joining THETA, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto and Rescu, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael’s Hospital working in health technology assessment (HTA), clinical trials, complex interventions, acute coronary syndrome and resuscitation. During her graduate studies and postdoctoral fellowship, Valeria has won many awards including NSERC, Ontario Women's Health Scholar's Award, HSFO Health Services/Population Health Post-Doctoral Fellowship and HSFC Jump Start Resuscitation Research Fellowship, as well as operational funding from the HSFC and the CIHR. Val has been associated, as Principal Investigator, Co-Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator, with over $10M in grant funding.

Publications

Search for Dr. Val Rac's publications in Pubmed.

Research Interests and Expertise

Dr Rac`s research interests and expertise are in the area of the health services research and the HTA and it is focused on the design, implementation and evaluation of large clinical trials, mixed-methods studies, complex health system interventions, program evaluations and registries. Her program of research is in the area of the design, implementation and evaluation of the complex interventions in the HTA research (technologies and services) and chronic disease management in the community (heart failure, COPD, chronic kidney disease, diabetes). More recently her research is also focused on the system level effects of health technologies and how they impact healthcare delivery. Currently Dr. Rac is overseeing implementation of all trials at THETA Collaborative and spearheading pan-provincial evaluation of Telehomecare Program offered in 8 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) to patients with heart failure (HF) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).