Matthew D Kearney, PhD, MPH

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Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Associate Director, Mixed Methods Research Lab (MMRL), Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, University of Pennsylvania
Senior Fellow, University of Pennsylvania Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics
Department: Family Medicine and Community Health

Contact information
Department of Family Medicine and Community Health
Penn Presbyterian Medical Center
Andrew Mutch Building, 6th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Education:
BS (Biology)
Union College, 2009.
MPH
University of Pennsylvania, 2016.
PhD (Community Health and Prevention)
Drexel University, 2021.
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Description of Research Expertise

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health (DFMCH) at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) with additional training in mixed methods, biostatistics, and qualitative research. I have a methodological focus on integrated research methods, and am currently Associate Director of the Mixed Methods Research Lab, a service center within Penn Medicine that facilitates a variety of inter- and multi-disciplinary research projects. Since 2019, I have served as a Research Fellow with Penn Medicine’s Center for Health Equity Advancement (CHEA). As a CHEA fellow, I have worked as a consultant, collaborator, and mentor on a variety of research projects that use mixed methods to evaluate disparities in care quality and workforce inclusion. I am also currently a Senior Fellow with UPenn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and have an appointment as a Research Specialist at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia.

At Penn my scholarship is focused on three specific areas: 1) program evaluation, 2) health promotion through community-engaged research, and 3) social media surveillance and evaluation. Since joining UPenn’s faculty in 2021, I have had the privilege of serving as evaluator on multiple federally-funded projects through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). As evaluator, I have employed my skills in mixed methods research to explore program implementation barriers and facilitators, solicit participant and broader community input, and identify factors associated with program success.

My research interests include identifying innovative strategies to investigate, evaluate, and address health behaviors and other phenomena within the digital environment of social media, as well as in clinical settings at Penn Medicine. I am particularly curious about the impact of social media health misinformation in unique social contexts and communities. As a doctoral candidate at Drexel University, my training focused on identifying and implementing novel approaches to explore health behaviors and communications on social media. At the University of Pennsylvania my scholarship is focused on three specific areas: 1) mixed methods research, 2) social media surveillance and evaluation, and 3) health promotion through community-engaged research. Based on my experience as a qualitative researcher studying misinformation’s impact on social media platforms including Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, I am deeply interested in understanding the role of misinformation in healthcare consumers’ decision making processes, in particular as it relates to vaccination.

Selected Publications

Baumrin, E., Cronholm, P. F., Kearney, M. D., Mengesha, M., Cesar, L. G., Keddem, S., Schapira, M. M., Lee, S. J., Loren, A. W., & Gelfand, J. M.: Outcomes of Importance to Patients Living With Cutaneous Chronic Graft-vs-Host Disease. JAMA Dermatology January 2025.

Harris, R. A., Matthew Kearney, Shimrit Keddem, Tara Calderbank, Liza Tomczuk, Justin Clapp, Jeanmarie Perrone, Henry R. Kranzler, Judith A. Long, & David S. Mandell: Organization of Primary Care and Early MOUD Discontinuation. Addiction Science & Clinical Practice In Press 2025.

Kaufmann, T. L., Saxton, J., Smith, C. E., Chang, P., Sebastian, K., Courtney, A., Hobbs, B., Galaznik, A., Rusli, E., Scott, J., Cortez, D., Kearney, M., Kvale, E. A., Kamal, A., Stover, A. M., Bennett, A. V., Pignone, M., & Rocque, G. B.: Pilot study of remote electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePRO) symptom monitoring of palliative care needs among outpatients with advanced solid cancers. Journal of Palliative Medicine In Press 2025.

Reddy, Y. N. V., Kearney, M. D., Ward, M., Burke, R. E., O’Hare, A. M., Reese, P. P., Lane-Fall, M. B., Jones, J., Liu, F., Martin, A., McGraw, A., Neumann, J., Pettis, A., & Salenger, P.: Identifying Major Barriers to Home Dialysis (The IM-HOME Study): Findings from a National Survey of Patients, Care Partners, and Providers. American Journal of Kidney Disease. Elsevier, 84(5), November 2024.

Kearney, M. D., Maheu, A., Booth, M., Newberg, A., Cronholm, P., & Ayubcha, S.: Promoting healthful and diverse eating behaviours through an extracurricular culinary skills intervention in Philadelphia. Journal of Nutritional Science. Cambridge University Press, 13: e57, October 2024.

Cohn J, Kearney MD, Donze ML, O’Brien CS, DeMarco M. : PROMOTE: An Innovative Curriculum to Enhance the Maternity Care Workforce Family Medicine. STFM Journals, 56(9): 567-571, September 2024.

Schrauben, S. J., Park, D., Amaral, S., Purcell, A., Zhang, S., Kearney, M. D., Bilger, A., Feldman, H., & Dember, L. M. : Supporting Self-Management of Healthy Behaviors in Chronic Kidney Disease and Hypertension: The SMART-HABITS Pilot Randomized Trial. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology 19, September 2024.

Kearney MD, Eaton T, Grabill M, Anderson S, Kumanyika KK: Evaluating Operation Good Food & Beverage, a Black Youth-Driven Public Advocacy Campaign. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. Springer, September 2024.

Jon Maniaci, Matthew D. Kearney, Sara B. DeMauro, Howard Panitch: Lived experiences of caregivers with infants treated at home with continuous invasive or noninvasive ventilation. Pediatric Pulmonology. Wiley, May 2024.

Kaufmann, T. L.; Saxton, J.; Smith, C. E.; Chang, P.; Sebastian, K.; Courtney, A.; Hobbs, B.; Galaznik, A.; Rusli, E.; Scott, J.; Cortez, D.; Kearney, M.; Kvale, E. A.; Kamal, A.; Stover, A. M.; Bennett, A. V.; Pignone, M.; Rocque, G. B.: Pilot study of remote electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePRO) symptom monitoring of palliative care needs among outpatients with advanced solid cancers. JCO Oncology Practice. ASCO Publications, 19(11_suppl), November 2023.

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Last updated: 01/14/2025
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