A special issue published yesterday in one of AcademyHealth’s official journals, Healthcare: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation, considers the impact of embedded research on solving the disconnect between health care organizations and health services researchers.
In an opening commentary “Enhancing the Role of Research in a Learning Health System,” issue editors David Atkins, Jeffrey Kullgren, and AcademyHealth CEO Lisa Simpson, reflect on ways to leverage embedded research to better align researchers and health systems, including ways funders can capitalize on embedded research frameworks to enhance the translation of research findings into changes in health care delivery.
A national meeting was organized by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in collaboration with AcademyHealth and Kaiser Permanente with additional support from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) which contributed to this special issue and addressed the following themes related to the role of effective embedded research programs:
- Organizational arrangements, including governance, staffing, and funding
- Research support for management decisions
- Data resources and use
- Strengthening the embedded research community
- Accelerating implementation of embedded research output
Other articles in this issue include:
- Governance and funding best practices for embedded research programs
- The Primary Care Analytics Team: Integrating research and clinical care within the Veterans Health Administration Office of Primary Care
- Realizing a learning health system through process, rigor and culture change
- Enhancing the practice of medicine with embedded multidisciplinary researchers in a model of change
- From implementation to sustainment: A large-scale adverse even disclosure support program generated through embedded research in the Veterans Health Administration
- Promoting learning health system feedback loops: Experience with a VA practice-based research network card study
- Mobilizing embedded research and operations partnerships to address harassment of women Veterans at VA medical facilities
- The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Innovators Network: Evaluation design, methods and lessons learned through an embedded research approach
- Evaluation of a collaborative VA network initiative to reduce racial disparities in blood pressure control among veterans with severe hypertension
- A prognostic information system for real-time personalized care: Lessons for embedded researchers
- Embedded Health Systems Science as a driver of care improvement within an integrated delivery organization
- Accounting for quality improvement during the conduct of embedded pragmatic clinical trials within healthcare systems: NIH Collaboratory case studies
- Accelerating learning healthcare system development through embedded research: Career trajectories, training needs, and strategies for managing and supporting embedded researchers
- Recommendations for strengthening the role of embedded researchers to accelerate implementation in health systems: Findings from a state-of-the-art (SOTA) conference workgroup
Read the full issue here.