Grant to Ohio Network to Improve Health Care Research in the State

The University of Cincinnati (UC) has been named part of a statewide network aimed at aligning academic and community-based research to improve health care.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality—as part of a national initiative—has awarded a five-year grant totaling nearly $600,000 to the Collaborative Ohio Inquiry Network (COIN). COIN is a group of nine Practice-Based Research Networks with ties to the state’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) institutions: UC, Case Western Reserve University and Ohio State University, along with Northeast Ohio Medical University.

COIN, which is being led and coordinated by Case Western Reserve, is one of only seven collaborative research networks in the country to be named as a Center of Excellence in Primary Care Practice-based Research and Learning.

PBRNs are groups of health care practices that are affiliated for the purpose of generating new knowledge relevant to improving health and health care in real-world settings. PBRNs link practicing clinicians with researchers, while at the same time enhancing the research skills of the network members. A learning community, COIN works to increase PBRNs’ research and development capacity, and aids in the translation of the research into real-world primary care practice.

UC will serve as the regional resource and coordinating center for Southwest Ohio. 

"The awarding of this grant will allow UC and its associated PBRNs the opportunity to involve Cincinnati primary care practices in new and exciting opportunities to improve the quality of care provided here, and to research practical, real-world medicine that matters to our providers and our patients,” says Nancy Elder, MD, professor in UC’s family and community medicine department and principle investigator for this project at UC.

There are two PBRNs affiliated with UC and with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center:  the Cincinnati Pediatric Research Group (CPRG) and the Cincinnati Area Research and Improvement Group (CARInG), which comprises family and internal medicine practices in the greater Cincinnati area.  Together, these two PBRNs include several hundred physicians and nurse practitioners and their staffs who provide primary care to thousands of families in Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky.

Saundra Regan, PhD, also of family and community medicine, and William Brinkman, MD, and Robert Siegel, MD, of UC’s pediatrics department and Cincinnati Children’s, will serve as co-investigators. 

Other centers funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality include groups led by the American Academy of Family Physicians, the University of Oklahoma, Clinical Directors Network, Inc., the American Academy of Pediatrics, Wayne State University, and the Medical University of South Carolina.

For more information, visit http://www.ahrq.gov/research/rescenters.htm.