Dr. Thies has been consulting with the Weitzman Institute since 2014, when she worked with nursing staff to implement care coordination in primary care, an initiative funded by the Yale School of Public Health. Since then, she has worked on several projects as a researcher, evaluator and faculty. These have included: an analysis of specialist recommendations to participants in Project ECHO Chronic Pain; an analysis of issues raised by participants during Project ECHO COVID early in the pandemic; evaluation of and faculty for the HRSA-funded National Training and Technical Assistance Partners learning collaboratives and webinars on team-based care, post-graduate nurse practitioner residency programs, health professions education, and quality improvement; and evaluation of the Prescription for Play (P4P) initiative funded by the LEGO Foundation.  These efforts have resulted in several publications, presentations, and two books co-written and edited with Weitzman Institute staff and faculty--Training the next generation: Residency and fellowship programs for nurse practitioners in community health centers (published by HRSA, 2017) and Team-Based Care in Community Health Centers (published by HRSA, due 2024).

Before joining the Weitzman Institute, Dr. Thies was the first nurse researcher for the Elliot Health System in New Hampshire for six years, working with hospitalists and nurses in acute and ambulatory care on a variety of data-driven initiatives to improve patient care using evidence-based practices.  These included preventing hospital acquired infections, standardizing clinical processes and documentation in the electronic health record, and screening for perinatal mood disorders.  Prior to this work, Dr. Thies spent many years in academia, most notably as an associate professor and the founder of a direct entry program into nursing for non-nurse college graduates at the University of Massachusetts Medical School Graduate School of Nursing, and as the tenured chair of the Department of Nursing at Colby-Sawyer College, an affiliate of the Mary Hitchcock Hospital at the Dartmouth Medical Center in New Hampshire. During that time, Dr. Thies also received training in quality improvement methods and data from the Dartmouth Institute and its Microsystems Academy.

Dr. Thies received her BS in nursing from Cornell University-New York Hospital School of Nursing, and an MS in psychiatric-mental health nursing from Adelphi University in New York. She worked as a mental health counselor in hospice in New York City with patients from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.  Her PhD is in developmental psychology from Boston College, where her research focused on resilience in children experiencing adversity. She has published books in child development with faculty from Boston College and Harvard Medical School.  She has taught statistics to undergraduates, and nursing and psychology at the undergraduate and graduate levels.  Dr. Thies lives in New Hampshire, where she has been on the Board for the New Hampshire Children’s Health Foundation. While she was on the grant committee, the Foundation funded the pilot study for ACERT—Adverse Childhood Experiences Response Team—a joint initiative of police, crisis and behavioral health services. It has become a national model.