The University of Southern California Department of Family Medicine's PBRN is applying for category-I funds to increase its capacity to promote evidence-based practice. This infrastructure support will assist the PBRN in becoming a significant contributor to practice-based research with low-income, ethnically diverse populations. With a predominately Latino and African-American patient base of 17,550, the growing, inner-city, four-site PBRN is in a unique position to conduct studies that involve meaningful subgroup analyses of underserved populations. The goals are to increase the capacity of the PBRN to conduct research on issues related to health disparities, and to develop effective mechanisms for transferring existing research findings into practice. The four-pronged approach will include: 1) identifying and testing an information system for use by the network; 2) increasing the network's capacity to translate research into practice by enhancing communication among network members; 3) expanding mechanisms for translating research into practice at network sites by evaluating the effectiveness of a participatory TRIP model; and 4) increasing the ability of the network to conduct practice-based research on health disparities by recruiting new practice sites that also serve ethnically diverse populations into the Network.
