This application outlines and describes the proposal by the Westat team to serve as the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Early Psychosis Intervention Network (EPINET) National Data Coordinating Center (ENDCC). The ENDCC will, in collaboration with up to five regional scientific hubs and a minimum of 20 Coordinated Specialty Care (CSC) sites funded under the companion NIMH EPINET RFA, facilitate and accelerate practice-based research in clinics providing evidence-based, coordinated care to persons in the early stages of psychotic illness. Evidence establishes that early intervention, specifically CSC, can improve symptoms and functioning. The Westat team envisions the ENDCC creating a scalable, flexible, and sustainable national platform that can accommodate a larger network of CSC programs. NIMH will, through the ENDCC, create the infrastructure essential to facilitate collaboration, share data elements, exchange innovative clinical practices, and provide analytic support and dissemination activities necessary to improve identification, diagnosis, assessment, effective interventions, and outcomes for early psychosis.
The specific aims for the ENDCC are to: (1) serve as the central coordinating entity for regional scientific hubs and facilitate the sharing of data collection strategies, early psychosis data, analytic methods, and clinical expertise; (2) curate and harmonize key assessment measures, clinical strategies, and data elements across regional scientific hubs; (3) implement a health informatics approach within and across regional hubs; (4) facilitate practice-based research through the development of a research dissemination infrastructure; and (5) disseminate CSC resources to the broader scientific, provider, and patient community, including the development of a public ENDCC website. The Westat ENDCC team includes highly experienced staff in health informatics, complex statistical analysis, data and workflow management, dissemination, service delivery and policy, and the conduct and coordination of the types of large, complex, and multi-layered projects represented by EPINET. The ENDCC will be guided by a Steering Committee composed of representatives from the regional scientific hubs, and a Research Advisory Group consisting of experts in FEP, child psychiatry, CSC implementation, health informatics, fidelity assessment, and research ethics who are not investigators with the regional hubs.
This project will establish the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Early Psychosis Intervention Network (EPINET) National Data Coordinating Center (ENDCC). The ENDCC will collaborate with up to five regional scientific hubs and a minimum of 20 Coordinated Specialty Care (CSC) sites funded under the companion NIMH EPINET RFA. The project will create the infrastructure essential to facilitate collaboration, share data elements, exchange innovative clinical practices, and provide analytic support and dissemination activities necessary to improve identification, diagnosis, assessment, effective interventions, and outcomes for early psychosis.
