The CRS Team

Kaia Gallagher, PhD, President, has over 30 years of research and evaluation experience, including strategic planning and evidence-based programming development.  She has worked extensively with governmental agencies, public health programs, and non-profit agencies throughout Colorado and the US. Kaia has a Doctoral degree in Sociology and has served as an evaluation consultant for programs in the areas of education, adolescent violence prevention, teen pregnancy, women’s health, school health, suicide, HIV education and health professions development.  She offers an understanding of prevention and treatment programs and grants management issues.  Kaia serves as a member of the Tri-County Board of Health and is the author of many peer-reviewed articles, books and evaluation reports.

Krystina A. Finlay, Ph.D., Director of Prevention Research, is a social psychologist who has evaluated prevention programs in schools, law enforcement, juvenile justice, community, and health systems focused on at-risk juvenile, parenting, education, truancy and substance use.  She offers expertise in applied psychology as well as developmental, cross-cultural, cognitive, and health psychology.  More broadly, she has provided training and technical assistance to community-based organizations in the areas of statistics, methodology design and survey instrumentation.  Over the past several years, she has served as the Evaluation Coordinator for Safe Schools/Health Students Demonstrations in both Adams and Pueblo Counties.  Earlier in her career, Dr. Finlay taught at New Mexico State University and the University of Colorado at Denver.

Diane Fox, Ph.D., Director of Human Services Research has over a decade of experience as a professional evaluator working in human services related fields in Colorado.  Diane has worked for both the Colorado Division of Youth Corrections and the Division of Mental Health.  Her experience includes participation in the evaluation of state legislative initiatives and federally funded grant projects.  She has worked with program participants and agency collaborators on research design and community participation.  She has developed data bases for original data collection and conducted training and technical assistance for users so that evaluation data are accurate and complete.  Her experience also includes reporting evaluation findings in a variety of formats to meet the needs of diverse audiences including state agencies, the legislature, funders and program participants.

 Lezlie Frank, Office Manager, brings over 20 years of administrative skills including extensive office management and data experience.  She has experience in managing both qualitative and quantitative data, is skilled in SPSS, EXCEL and ACCESS and provides administrative project support.

Paul Nutting, MD, MSPH, Director of Research, has over 30 years experience in health services research on primary care and public health.  He is also a Professor of Family Medicine, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.  He has recently been awarded research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research in diabetes (NIDDK) and depression (NIMH).  His current work examines strategies for improving the quality of primary care for chronic conditions.  He has published extensively from his research with over 120 articles in peer-reviewed journals.  He has also served as an Associate Editor of the Annals of Family Medicine and was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Family Practice.  In 1995, he was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science.

Kim Riley, M.P.H., Director of Health Education, offers over 16 years of experience working in community health education and research focused primarily on health disparity issues in underserved communities.  She is bilingual in Spanish and English, and has worked with Latino communities in the Denver area. Kim managed a large randomized clinical study focused on self-management of chronic illness and community resource support targeted to a primarily Spanish speaking patient population of a community health center. Ms. Riley has recently worked on several school and community-based program evaluations, including a pilot test of a tobacco advocacy curriculum for middle school youth, Wellness Policy implementation in Colorado school districts, physical education and nutrition programming in the Denver Public School system, and the implementation of a multi-component intervention on second-hand smoke exposure in the Latino community.

Tara Wass, PhD, Director of Research Design and Statistics, has over 10 years experience researching the development of children and families. Tara offers expertise in research design, methodology, and statistical analysis. She investigated the impact of stress and smoking on fetal development, cognitive development during infancy, and infant and preschool predictors of school readiness. At the community level, Tara provided statistical consulting for a regional program investigating barrier to access and utilization of prenatal and pediatric care by low income women.

Suzanne White, MS, Director of Policy and Planning,  has expertise in policy development, planning and strategic planning. She served as Co-Facilitator for STEPP’s Tobacco Disparities Planning process.  She helped organize the planning process, facilitated monthly meetings, provided structure and guidance to the planning process and tracked performance milestones.  She received CDC training in strategic planning for disparities populations

Karrie Witkind, MS, Director of Community Health, brings over 15 years experience conducting social research including phone and key informant interviewing and survey research as well as over ten years experience in database design.  Karrie earned a B.A. degree in Sociology with a Concentration in Analysis and Research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a M.S. degree in Community Health Education from the University of New Mexico.  She has counseled and educated patients on wellness issues and has performed outreach as an HIV Education Volunteer.  In partnership with a local coalition, she assessed southeastern Colorado's readiness for a tobacco prevention campaign utilizing a community readiness framework.  She has worked with physician groups to explore the potential for practice level change, assess the implementation of new practice initiatives and collect patient satisfaction data.  Her evaluation experience includes work in community health, education, teen pregnancy prevention, tobacco prevention education and workforce initiatives.  Karrie is skilled in designing logic models, surveys and benchmark reporting tools and conduction data analyses.  She is a member of the American Evaluation Association and the Colorado Public Health Association.