Staff Biography

Caitlin O'Neill, RD

Quality Improvement Coach

Caitlin O’Neill is a registered dietitian with a master’s degree in food science and human nutrition from Colorado State University. Following her undergraduate work in food and business at the University of Illinois-Urbana, she focused on quality improvement in the food industry, where she was trained in total quality improvement principles, Just in Time inventory control and LEAN quality improvement.

After completing her RD and master’s program, O’Neill worked as a project manager at the AMC Cancer Research Center in Lakewood, Colo., in behavioral science, writing grants and helping people improve behaviors around diet and exercise. After five years she went to Kaiser Permanente to help lead clinical research on diabetes, focusing on self-management support. At both AMC and Kaiser, O’Neill continued to develop her motivational interviewing and focus-group facilitation skills.

Her career came full circle when she joined the University of Colorado’s Department of Family Medicine as a quality improvement facilitator. Using her TQI background and her clinical experience, O’Neill conducted research on how family medicine practices could adopt and sustain quality-improvement initiatives. O’Neill had worked closely with HealthTeamWorks while at the University of Colorado, and she joined the company team in January 2010.