Barbara Hanusa's (MsHyg ’90) career journey is a testament to intellectual curiosity and adaptability. With a bachelor's degree in physics from Carnegie Mellon—then called (at the time it was known as Carnegie Tech—and a PhD in experimental social psychology also from CMU, she seemed destined for academia. But life often has other plans.
Hanusa went through a number of postdoctoral and temporary research associate positions early in her career, including substitute teaching at her alma matter and working with the Women's Studies program at Pitt. She taught social psychology, research methods and the cognitive psychology of problem solving at Saint Vincent College for four years, but even that was temporary, as she was standing in for another instructor who was pursuing additional training.
Hanusa was looking for something more stable. Reflecting on what skills she could leverage into a sustainable career, and realizing that she wanted to participate in more high-level research ultimately led her to pursue a master’s degree at the then Graduate School of Public Health.
Learning by Doing
During her master of science in hygiene program in the Department of Biostatistics, she had a fellowship in the Department of Internal Medicine working with Wishwa Kapoor on several grants in statistician positions making it an immersive experience. She was taking her biostatistics learning outside of the classroom, applying it to real research questions.
Hanusa continued to work with Kapoor as a consulting statistician when he later started the Center for Research on Health Care. Founded to bring together physicians and public health researchers, the center provided resources for junior researchers including data management, statistical help, and methodological guidance. Hanusa worked on studies examining syncope, pneumonia, postpartum depression and analyzing biological data from breast milk samples. She also collaborated with Debra Bogan, now Pennsylvania Secretary of Health, on research involving women who used drugs during pregnancy.
This work suited her, given her diverse background. Her physics training gave her an analytical background, her PhD in psychology provided not only insight into human behavior but also research design, and her biostatistics education offered the tools to answer complex questions in health science research. After 20 years of looking for her fit, and a brief stop in Pitt’s Department of Psychiatry, she took a position as a consulting statistician at the VA Center for Health Equity and Research and Promotion.
A Natural Fit at the VA
At the VA, she found an environment where intellectual curiosity was encouraged and research was supported, Hanusa notes. "They had a career development program for junior investigators, and I ended up getting involved in providing statistical and research advice to MDs, postdoctoral psychologists, and epidemiologists." This mentorship role became one of the most fulfilling aspects of her career.
Over her nearly 12 years at the VA, Hanusa became an expert in health services research and observational study design. She worked closely with physicians and other health care professionals, helping them navigate the complexities of research methodology. "A lot of people would ask me for help on grants," she says, "and I would try to explain to them what they could and couldn't conclude from different types of designs."
The Art of Study Design
For Hanusa, the intellectual challenge lay in matching research questions to appropriate study designs. "Observational studies are really hard," she emphasizes, highlighting the difficulty of drawing causal conclusions when randomization isn't possible. "You have to be very careful about what you can conclude from the different types of study designs."
This perspective, coupled with her previous experience, made her a valuable consultant to investigators across the VA system. She helped researchers think through the fundamental logic of their studies. What question were they really asking? What study design could answer it? What limitations would they need to consider?
Because experiential social psychology emphasized controlled experiments and understanding confounding variables, it translated directly to health services research, where randomized trials aren't always feasible or ethical.
Hanusa takes particular pride in the investigators whose skills she helped develop. "The career development program was really important," she reflects. "I got to help people think through their research questions and design studies that could actually answer them."
When she got to that position at the VA, she could bridge disciplines, translate between quantitative and qualitative approaches, and help researchers see their questions from multiple angles through her specific academic and career path.
"I really enjoyed the work," she says simply. And in that understated way, she defines a career built not on a linear path, but on following her intellectual curiosity and using her breadth of experience and knowledge to help others advance their own research.
For students and early-career researchers in biostatistics and health data science, Hanusa's story offers an important lesson: sometimes the most valuable expertise comes not from following a straight line, but from gathering tools from many disciplines and learning to apply them creatively to real-world problems.