The Center's focus on achieving community improvements in quality of care will require new kinds of studies that involve linking agencies together into network interventions that can collaborate around common Ql goals. Interventions implemented within a network may shift agency relationships and network capacities, requiring new ways of tracking network outcomes. Further, the availability of more systematic network data would offer an important resource to support the design of additional studies of Ql implementation within a network context, for example by identifying relevant agencies for a particular quality problem or clarifying partnership capacities to implement a network-based intervention. This focus on networks reflects a shift in the Center's goals towards achieving more community-wide impact, a shift that requires development and application of the methods, concepts and techniques of network analysis. We define an organizational network as a set of organizations and relationships among them.184 These relationships provide channels through which information, innovations, and resources flow. Inter-organizational networks form the backbone of inter-agency service delivery systems185 within communities. But organizations may not have 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 such studies, could also provide valuable data for agencies to improve services. Such a fit of methods development need and community agency opportunity exemplifies the """"""""win-win"""""""" or mutual benefit principle for equitable partnered, participatory research.2 This R34 can thus advance the methods and mission of the Center
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