About Us

About the 4 Pillars™ Development Team

Our PittVax mission: Protecting people: Vaccine policy to practice.

The 4 Pillars™ development team is part of the PittVax vaccine research group of the University of Pittsburgh Department of Family Medicine. Under the leadership of Richard K. Zimmerman, MD, MPH, MA, PittVax brings together a diverse group of investigators and research associates. Trained in family and preventive medicine and bioethics, Dr. Zimmerman has undertaken immunization research for 2 decades. Dr. Zimmerman has been the Principal Investigator on numerous federally and industry funded grants. The other founding member of PittVax is Mary Patricia Nowalk, PhD, RDN, who is trained in chronic disease and nutritional epidemiology. Drs. Zimmerman and Nowalk have collaborated since 2000.

The 4 Pillars™ Practice Transformation Program was developed over a ten-year period, beginning with health services and survey research on barriers to childhood and adult vaccinations and barriers to standing order protocols in primary care, and progressing to practice improvement randomized cluster trials to increase adult vaccinations, childhood influenza vaccination, and adolescent influenza and HPV vaccinations. The 4 Pillars™ Practice Transformation Program has been tested and improved. It has been used as the foundation for a UPMC Health System-wide effort to increase adult vaccinations in ambulatory care practices and for quality improvement through an ABFM Performance Improvement Activity for physicians.

Other research by the PittVax team includes clinical trials of HPV vaccine, modeling studies to determine cost effectiveness of proposed vaccination strategies, and studies of immunological response to influenza vaccine. The PittVax team has also been one of the 5 (now 7) sites for the US Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness Network since 2011, which has produced influenza vaccine effectiveness estimates for the CDC and contributed to national influenza vaccination policy and recommendations.