We seek category-I funding to develop a primary care practice-based research network (PBRN) at Cambridge Health Alliance with the following specific aims: 1) to study the health care needs of a diverse population of minority and low-income patients served by community health centers; 2) to develop research ideas from a cohesive, mission-driven group of practicing primary care providers and from the communities they serve; 3) to use electronic data collection to aggregate practice-derived data; 4) to develop systems to facilitate the translation of research findings into practice; 5) to implement and study rapid cycle quality improvement projects; and 6) to identify potential external sources of funding support. We will garner support for the PBRN and will solicit research and quality improvement ideas from practicing primary care providers by conducting site visits to every Cambridge Health Alliance-affiliated neighborhood health center. We will also conduct focus groups with primary care providers, and will create an e-mail list-serve to discuss research ideas as well as to disseminate new research findings. We will form a committee charged with identifying research developments that are relevant to our community health center patient population. To ensure a patient voice in the research process, we will actively involve a community advisory board. Our PBRN will involve trainees, residents, and general medicine fellows. We will also draw upon the resources of the greater Harvard medical community by creating a research advisory board comprising senior general internal medicine faculty, and will consult with well-established PBRN network directors for technical assistance. The principal investigator will receive training in how to query EPIC, the ambulatory electronic medical record, and in how to transform data into a SQL structure for SAS reporting. The principal investigator and co-network director will work with primary care providers to create templates in the electronic medical record that facilitate data aggregation for quality improvement efforts and for research.
