Lori Higa, BSN, RN-BC

Lori Higa, BSN, RN-BC is currently at Kaiser Permanente as an Innovation Nurse on a design team developing new care pathways for frail and complex patients in the primary care setting. She has 10 years of experience as a case manager in Home Health and Hospice for Group Health Cooperative. She received her Bachelor's in nursing from Seattle University in 1993. She started her career in community mental health working with deaf mentally ill adolescents, adjudicated youth, and school-based mental health programs at Seattle Mental Health. She has coordinated several research studies at the University of Washington studying wound healing, fibromyalgia & chronic fatigue. She has worked as a depression case manager providing behavioral activation and problem-solving therapy for three different research studies following the original IMPACT study. Those studies were: PATHWAYS - a research study treating diabetic patients with depression; the CARE study - providing education and treatment options for adolescents with depression; and the IMPACT-DP pilot study - treating older patients with arthritis pain and depression in total for 7 years. She provides implementation consultation and training of Collaborative Care Depression model for the AIMS Center.