Washington University Pediatric and Adolescent Ambulatory Research Consortium (WU PAARC) is a newly established practice-based research network (PBRN) of community pediatricians affiliated with Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis (WUSM). WU PAARC provides a formal structure to further develop and promote previous community research endeavors. WU PAARC will build on existing collaborative relationships between WUSM and community pediatricians in education and clinical research. For over 10 years, community pediatricians have been teaching residents from the Department of Pediatrics about ambulatory care of children and adolescents in the Community Outpatient Practice Experience Program. In addition, many community pediatricians have participated in a variety of clinical research studies in collaboration with WUSM researchers. These collaborative relationships work well, and have identified a core group of community pediatricians that have an ongoing commitment to practice-based research. Category I funding from this grant will be used to establish an infrastructure for WU PAARC that facilitates communication and increases the network's capabilities for efficient data collection. We will establish a web-based communication network to coordinate WU PAARC activities, disseminate information rapidly, conduct member surveys and facilitate communication among practitioners. We will provide training to standardize billing codes, and develop methods for office staff to simply obtain electronic patient lists from billing data. We will implement a faculty development plan to increase research expertise among WU PAARC members. In addition, we will increase our data collection capabilities with a web-based enhancement for a computer interviewing system already owned by WUSM. We will test the technologies and methodologies developed in this application in small projects to describe WU PAARC practices, practitioners and patients. We will also implement a modified Delphi approach for selection of future WU PAARC study topics by WU PAARC membership. With this infrastructure support WU PAARC will be well positioned to address questions relevant to community pediatric care. CATEGORY I
