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. 2020 Sep-Oct;33(5):774-778.
doi: 10.3122/jabfm.2020.05.200053.

A Practice-Based Research Network (PBRN) Roadmap for Evaluating COVID-19 in Community Health Centers: A Report From the OCHIN PBRN

Jennifer E DeVoe  1 , Sonja M Likumahuwa-Ackman  2 , Heather E Angier  1 , Nathalie Huguet  1 , Deborah J Cohen  1 , Susan A Flocke  1 , Miguel Marino  1 , Rachel Gold  1
Affiliations

A Practice-Based Research Network (PBRN) Roadmap for Evaluating COVID-19 in Community Health Centers: A Report From the OCHIN PBRN

Jennifer E DeVoe et al. J Am Board Fam Med. 2020 Sep-Oct.

Abstract

Background: Primary care practice-based research networks (PBRNs) are critical laboratories for generating evidence from real-world settings, including studying natural experiments. Primary care's response to the novel coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic is arguably the most impactful natural experiment in our lifetime. EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF COVID-19: We briefly describe the OCHIN PBRN of community health centers (CHCs), its partnership with implementation scientists, and how we are leveraging this infrastructure and expertise to create a rapid research response evaluating how CHCs across the country responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 RESEARCH ROADMAP: Our research agenda focuses on asking: How has care delivery in CHCs changed due to COVID-19? What impact has COVID-19 had on the delivery of preventive services in CHCs? Which PBRN services (e.g., data surveillance, training, evidence synthesis) are most impactful to real-world practices? What decision-making strategies were used in the PBRN and its practices to make real-time changes in response to the pandemic? What critical factors in successfully and sustainably transforming primary care are illuminated by pandemic-driven changes?

Discussion and conclusions: PBRNs enable real-world evaluation of practice change and natural experiments, and thus are ideal laboratories for implementation science research. We present a real-time example of how a PBRN Implementation Laboratory activated a response to study a historic natural experiment, to help other PBRNs charting a course through this pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; Community Health Centers; Coronavirus; Decision Making; Delivery of Health Care; Evidence-Based Medicine; Evidence-Based Practice; Implementation Science; Information Dissemination; Organizational Innovation; Pandemics; Practice-Based Research; Primary Health Care.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: None.

Figures

Figure 1:
Figure 1:
OCHIN PBRN’s COVID-19 Evaluation Building Blocks
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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