Happy November, everyone! I hope you are staying cozy as the weather gets a bit cooler. We have had a busy and exciting fall thus far.
Here are a few updates for you all:
October brought us great news as we have entered Phase 3 of ADVANCE! We are excited to continue building the nation’s leading safety net research network through a partnership that serves more than 4 million vulnerable patients across 126 organizations (>1100 clinics) in 24 states. This funding also supports ADVANCE as a leader in collecting social determinants of health (SDH) and understanding the impact of these SDH on access to care, healthcare utilization, health disparities, and clinical outcomes.
Additionally, we are happy to announce that Dr. John Heintzman was awarded funding for “Health Disparities Collaborative Research Group (CRG 4).” ADVANCE and our partner REACHnet, in New Orleans, will co-lead the Health Disparities CRG together in continuing the work on disparities in health and healthcare in racial and ethnic minorities, sexual and gender minorities, and social determinants of health.
In more great news, we learned that that “Leveraging Healthcare Data Assets and Partners to Improve Latent Tuberculosis (LTBI) Surveillance and Intervention” led by Dr. Aaron Alford, National Network of Public Health Institutes and co-led by myself and Dr. Jonathan Todd, was awarded funding. In order to better understand LTBI screening practices in the U.S., this project will use longitudinal data from a large national research network to characterize the incidence of LTBI and TB, and also analyze the adherence to and relevance of current TB screening best practices in the primary care setting. ADVANCE is partnering with the REACHnet CRN on this important project.
In October, our third Grand Rounds series included a presentation from Dr. Douglas Krakower and Dr. Julia Marcus entitled “Optimizing EHR-Based Prediction Models to Identify Potential Candidates for HIV Pre-exposure Prophylaxis in Community Health Clinics”. If you were not able to attend the event, please email William Pinnock at pinnockw@ochin.org to receive a recording of the presentation.
This month we are excited to host our final Grand Rounds presenter of 2018. Dr. Rishi Manchanda, President & CEO of Health Begins will be presenting on his work in the field of social determinants of health. Mark your calendars for November 16th from 12:00 – 1:00 PM PT as this is one not to miss! If you would like to register, please email William Pinnock at pinnockw@ochin.org.
Also, we hosted our tri-annual Patient Engagement Panel (PEP) meeting on October 17th. At this meeting, members of the study team presented on “the Impact of Patient Complexity on Healthcare Utilization (Health Systems Demonstration Project: Phase III),” which looks at how patient complexity and social determinants of health, such as access to stable housing, poverty, reliable access to food, etc., affect health outcomes. The PEP is open to all patients who are willing to discuss their experiences, perspectives, and thoughts they relate to health research topics. You do not need to have experience serving as patient advisor or investigator to join the PEP. If you or someone you know is interested in joining the PEP, please email our PEP Coordinator at PEP@ochin.org for more information.
The ADVANCE Research Data Warehouse (RDW) team had several notable achievements in October. Notably, the new ADVANCE data dictionary is now available in Excel format. Additionally, HCN patient addresses have been geocoded and are now available in the RDW. In the past these were only available for OCHIN patients.
Finally, there have been some staffing transitions on the ADVANCE project management team. Thank you so much to Jee Oakley, Project Manager, and Nikki Stover, Project Coordinator, for their hard work. They have done a great job and will be missed. I am so excited to welcome Mary Frances Ritchie as our new ADVANCE Project Manager, and Adrienne Cherry as our ADVANCE Project Coordinator. We are also very excited to welcome some new Investigators, analysts and research associates onto our ADVANCE team.
We hope you are enjoying the crisp air and changing leaves as much as we are. We look forward to sharing more as the season progresses.
Best,
Jon
