WELCOME
Welcome to the third edition of the C-TRaP Newsletter! We are proud of the continued impact our team is making across the community and among our partners and stakeholders. This edition highlights ongoing projects, collaborations, and upcoming presentations at regional and national conferences. Several manuscripts are currently under review, and additional abstracts, posters, and publications will be added soon—so be sure to check back for future updates and accomplishments from our team.
- Mirna and Dima Director Mirna Becevic, PhD, MHA, FAMIA, becevicm@health.missouri.edu Deputy Director Dima Dandachi, MD, MPH, FIDSA, FACP dandachid@health.missouri.edu
Former U. S. Senator Roy Blunt (back row, center), accompanied by Dean Richard J. Barohn, MD, MU School of Medicine (back row, 4th from the left) visited MTN and C-TRaP to discuss current and future projects.
MEET THE TEAM
We are introducing a few members of the team in every edition.
Praveen Rao, PhD is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) at the University of Missouri (MU). His research interests are in the areas of scalable AI, big data, data science, health informatics, and cybersecurity. His research, teaching, and outreach activities have been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Alzheimer’s Association, Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), the University of Missouri System, University of Missouri Research Board, as well as support from industry partners. His research, teaching, and mentoring achievements have been recognized over the years. He received the EECS Outstanding Senior Faculty Researcher Award (2025), the MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics Excellence in Mentoring Award (2025), and the EECS Senior Faculty Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring Award (2023). He is also a recipient of the IBM Smarter Planet Faculty Innovation Award (2010), the IBM Big Data and Analytics Faculty Award (2013), the prestigious National Research Council (NRC) Research Associateship Award (2016-2017), the UMKC Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Researchers, Scholars, and Artists (2016), and the UMKC N.T. Veatch Award for distinguished research and creativity (2018). He is a Senior Member of the ACM (2020) and IEEE (2015). Earlier this year Dr. Rao was named a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Senior Member. It is a great honor for him and for the C-TRaP team!
Benjamin W. Casterline, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the University of Missouri Department of Dermatology with expertise in immunology and host-microbe interactions. As a C-TraP Co-Investigator, he contributes specialized knowledge in telehealth applications for dermatologic care and multimodal data integration approaches essential for serving underserved communities across Missouri. His translational research program combines mechanistic immunology training with practical clinical experience to address health disparities through innovative telehealth solutions and evidence-based therapeutic interventions. Dr. Casterline is developing an innovative research program focused on alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a tick-associated allergic condition that disproportionately affects rural populations in the Midwest. Through support from both the Dermatology Foundation Physician-Scientist Career Development Award and the ICTS KL2 Career Development Program at Washington University in St. Louis, his work aims to address fundamental gaps in understanding and managing this complex disease. Supported by the Dermatology Foundation, Dr. Casterline’s translational research program investigates the underlying immunologic mechanisms of AGS and seeks to improve approaches to diagnosis and patient management. This work builds on clinical observations and laboratory studies to better characterize disease biology and inform strategies that reduce diagnostic uncertainty and improve patient outcomes. Complementing this effort, his KL2-supported research focuses on developing a precision medicine framework for AGS by integrating biological, genetic, and electronic health record data. This multimodal approach is designed to define distinct clinical and biological subtypes of the disease while enabling the development of predictive models that support personalized patient counseling and management. Together, these projects aim to advance a comprehensive, data-driven approach to AGS that bridges mechanistic discovery with clinically actionable tools, with a particular focus on improving care for underserved populations across Missouri.
PROJECTS UPDATE
Year 1 projects approaching completion:
- From necessity to norm: Longitudinal and temporal trends analysis of telehealth utilization
- The ECHO effect: Measuring tele-mentoring exposure required for sustainable clinical practice transformation
- Decision analysis of factors associated with telehealth adoption
- Privacy-preserving data repository for Project ECHO networks using federated learning
Work Accomplished
Manuscripts:
Conference manuscript "Explainable Schema Mapping with Retrieval-Augmented Generation and MedGemma" under review Journal manuscript "Telehealth Utilization Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic: Longitudinal Medicaid Claims Analysis of Policy Shifts and Temporal Change Points" under review "X-Map: Explainable Schema Mapping with a Retrieval-Augmented MedGemma Model for Clinical Data Harmonization" under review "Federated Learning in Healthcare: Bridging Engineering Innovation and Clinical Deployment:A Systematic Literature Review" under review
Poster presentation at conferences
C-TRaP: Turning Evidence into Better Care for Everyone, Everywhere in the Era of AI SEARCH 2026 – The National Telehealth Research Symposium, June 2–3, 2026 Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Explainable Schema Mapping for Harmonizing Telehealth Case Presentation forms Using Retrieval-Augmented Generation IEEE/ACM CHASE 2026, Aug 4-6, 2026 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania From Necessity to Norm: Preliminary Trend in Telehealth Utilization Among Missouri Medicaid Beneficiaries, 2017-2025 under review Assessing Prescribing Behavior Change After Pain Management ECHO Participation under review
Invited talks at conferences
2026 National Telehealth and Virtual Care Conference March 26-27, 2026 Nashville, TN Presentation topic: Telehealth and AI Presenter: Dr. Mirna Becevic Midwest HIV Response and Action Summit April 22, 2026 St. Louis, MO Presentation topic: Telehealth as an EHE Accelerator: Expanding HIV Prevention and Care across Missouri Presenter: Dr. Dima Dandachi Missouri Dermatology Trainee Advocacy Day May 2, 2026 Virtual Presentation topic: From Screen to Skin: A Decade of Dermatology Learning Through Show-Me ECHO Presenter: Dr. Mirna Becevic
Oral presentations
Decision Analysis of Factors Associated with Telehealth Adoption, by Hubert Miller, under review An Assessment of Telehealth Model Diffusion, by Dr. Jim Dearing, under review
Upcoming conferences and webinars
C-TRaP webinar
Time: Tuesday, June 16, 2026, noon - 1 p.m. CDT Speaker: Dr. Jim Dearing Topic: Explaining the Diffusion of a Telehealth Innovation: The Case of Project ECHO The Project ECHO Model has spread worldwide to more than 1200 healthcare and academic locations. This talk will interpret ECHO model spread in terms of both standard and atypical factors from the Diffusion of Innovation research & practice framework. Learning outcomes: Participants will learn the three factor-sets that usually account for the diffusion of an innovation and which characteristics of the particular Project ECHO Model have made adoption an easy decision for organizational decision makers.
2026 National Ryan White Conference on HIV Care & Treatment
Time: August 4 - 7, 2026, hybrid, in-person in Washington, D.C. or virtual
Dr. Dandachi will speak at the Strengthening Patient-Centered Models for RWP 2030 plenary on Thursday, August 6, 2026 from 12:45 p.m. - 2:15 p.m. ET. Topic: From Lost to Re-Engaged: Telehealth, Rapid ART Restart, and Person-Centered HIV Care Through the ACCELERATE Model Register today to join.
Course in the upcoming fall semester
GRADUATE STUDENTS WHO PLAY IMPORTANT ROLES
"I come from a research focused background shaped at Sharif University of Technology and further developed during my Master's and PhD at the University of Missouri, Columbia. I am passionate about applying data driven methods (NLP, language models, geospatial analysis, and health related research) to understand complex real world problems. What excites me most is turning imperfect data into meaningful insights with practical impact, and after completing my PhD, I hope to continue this work in collaborative research environments where theory meets application." Erfan is actively involved in multiple C-TRaP research projects. He presented a poster titled "Temporal and profession-specific trends in HIV case queries within the Show-Me ECHO program" in May at ATA Nexus 2026. He will be presenting a poster on behalf of C-TRaP in SEARCH conference in June.
PARTNER'S CORNER
Svara Narain has a bachelor’s degree in statistics and a master’s degree in business analytics and works in telehealth research and program evaluation. During her summer internship at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, she supported ROI analyses of the AI-Enhanced Virtual Nursing Program, which engendered a strong interest in translating complex healthcare data into actionable insights. Svara joined UMMC team in 2026. She contributes a lot of efforts in literature review, and she is collaborating with C-TRaP Team 3 and 5 on a manuscript about federated learning in healthcare.
DISCLAIMER
The Center for Telehealth Research and Policy (C-TRaP) is funded by the Office for the Advancement of Telehealth (OAT) in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under cooperative agreement number 1 U3GTH55162‐01‐00. The funding supports this website as well as all publications and presentations advanced from listed research projects. These contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of HRSA or any other funding agency.
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