The Center's focus on achieving community improvements in quality ofcare will require new kinds of studies that involve linking agencies together into network interventions that cancollaborate around common Ql goals. Interventions implemented within a network may shift agencyrelationships and network capacities, requiring new ways of tracking network outcomes. Further, the availabilityof more systematic network data would offer an important resource to support the design of additional studiesof Ql implementation within a network context, for example by identifying relevant agencies for a particularquality problem or clarifying partnership capacities to implement a network-based intervention. This focus onnetworks reflects a shift in the Center's goals towards achieving more community-wide impact, a shift thatrequires development and application of the methods, concepts and techniques of network analysis. We definean organizational network as a set of organizations and relationships among them.184 These relationshipsprovide channels through which information, innovations, and resources flow. Inter-organizational networksform the backbone of inter-agency service delivery systems185 within communities. But organizations may nothave the necessary data on their networks to facilitate effective collaboration in services delivery. Thus,network data that might afford outcomes for community intervention studies and facilitate the design of suchstudies, could also provide valuable data for agencies to improve services. Such a fit of methods developmentneed and community agency opportunity exemplifies the 'win-win' or mutual benefit principle for equitablepartnered, participatory research.2 This R34 can thus advance the methods and mission of the Center
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