Dr. Corley is Kaiser Permanente Northern California’s inaugural Chief Research Officer, which includes developing collaborations between clinicians and traditional researchers within the 700-person Division of Research and a large clinical trials program for accelerating clinical change and developing learning healthcare systems.
A practicing gastroenterologist at KP San Francisco, he is a clinician scientist with expertise in developing large clinical and translational r esearch programs and educational development, including more than 30 NIH, NCI and other federal grants/contracts. These resulted in multiple first and senior author publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, and other leading journals. For esophageal adenocarcinoma, one of the most rapidly increasing cancers in recent decades, this collaborative work elucidated its carcinogenic and potential prevention pathways, using foundational epidemiology, metabolomics, and genetics (including one of the first large genome-wide genetic analyses). For colorectal cancer, it created new understandings of disease progression, natural history, genetics, and screening effects, including gene-environment interactions. These findings changed guidelines for screening quality and tested methods associated with 50% reductions in colorectal cancer incidence and mortality. They also demonstrated one of the first approaches to largely eradicating demographic differences in cancer incidence and death through equitable application of a population-level program.
He co-led the integration of a novel KPNC Delivery Science and Applied Research (DARE) program that has conducted over 200 active or completed projects in recent years. These efforts identify modifiable research questions likely to influence patient and system outcomes, develop collaborations between clinicians and traditional full-time scientists/epidemiologists, use extremely large data sources for relevant research, and develop mechanisms for rapid implementation (and re-evaluation) of research findings and intervention outcomes.
