This application proposes The National Dental PBRN (NDPBRN), a national collaborative of practices and organizations across the United States that will engage practitioners in the excitement of discovery for the benefit of everyday clinical practice and its patients. Consistent with specifications in the RFA itself, the Specific Aims will be to: (1) support the infrastructure and conduct of national oral health research studies in dental practices on topics of importance to practitioners; (2) provide evidence useful in daily patient care; (3) facilitate the translation of research findings into clinical practice. NDPBRN also will aim to broaden the scope of dental practice via certain studies to better integrate dental practice into the larger health care system, and to reach out further to dental education to inculcate in graduating clinicians an appreciation for the role of science in everyday clinical practice. NDPBRN will measure and document this change and the network's impact on bringing about change in everyday clinical practice. NDPBRN will accomplish these aims by building upon the many lessons learned from its exceptionally productive current national network, and include additional states and activities. We are fortunate to have gained important experience these past six years using the same regional funding structure and administrative structure mandated in the RFA. The effectiveness of this structure is evident from our current network's high level of productivity, as judged by number of publications and completed studies, the size, scope, quality (e.g. Good Clinical Practice audit trail standards), and diversity of studies, and impact on health and daily clinical practice. NDPBRN will comprise six regions, a Data Coordinating Core (mainly at Westat, Inc.), and an Administrative Core largely based at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Other key elements of the governing and administrative structure will include a Practitioner Steering Committee, Regional Directors Committee, Director of Dental Informatics, Director of Communications & Dissemination, Director of Practitioner Training & Education Component, Director of Academic Collaborations, Protocol Consultants Group, Patient Advisory Board, Publications & Presentations Committee, Central IRB, Data & Safety Monitoring Board, and NIDCR staff. The Western region will be led by Kaiser Permanente, the Midwest region by Health Partners Research Foundation, the Southwest region by the Univ. of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the South Central region by UAB, the South Atlantic region by the Univ. of Florida, and the Northeast region by the Univ. of Rochester.
The network's overall goal will be to do science that is immediately applicable to everyday clinical practice, to foster its movement into everyday clinical practice, and thereby help improve the health of the nation. NDPBRN will continue to comprise a highly collaborative environment wherein clinicians in everyday clinical practice, academic researchers, patient representatives, and their communities become engaged in 'win-win' activities that each group sees as mutually beneficial.
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