L.A. Net

NPA Publishes Strategy for Reducing Health Disparities

LA_Net — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:42:33 +0000

The strategy—a product of the National Partnership for Action (NPA) to End Health Disparities—incorporates ideas, suggestions and comments from thousands of individuals and organizations across the country. Local groups can use the National Stakeholder Strategy to identify which goals are most important for their communities and adopt the most effective strategies and action steps to help reach them.

Colorado Clinic Helps Diabetics Avoid Problems with 1-Stop Coordinated Care

LA_Net — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:36:31 +0000

PBS reports on a Colorado clinic that helps patients tackle the symptoms of diabetes before the disease’s side effects become major health issues.

L.A. Net Participates in Peers for Progress 2010 International Conference

LA_Net — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:55:58 +0000

Peer support takes many forms. There is no one right way to deliver peer support. And that was the topic at hand this past October during the Peers for Progress 2010 International Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

More than 60 representatives of peer support programs and organizations came from around the world to exchange ideas about the development, application, and contributions of peer support as a critical part of prevention and global health care. Including 14 Peers for Progress evaluation grantees and more than 40 groups involved in peer support, attendees bonded despite language barriers and cultural differences, as well as varied contexts and topics. Conference attendees sought to:

Examine and exchange ideas regarding what we know about peer support, its application, and contribution to health promotion and health care;
Facilitate communication and global networking among peer support programs for quality improvement; and
Identify strategies for dissemination and advocacy of peer support as a routine part of health care and prevention for all people.

In addition to grantees from Australia, Cameroon, Hong Kong, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda, United Kingdom, and the United States, this meeting included leaders in peer support projects from Cambodia, Chile, China, India, Iraq, Malaysia, Netherlands, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Participants formed a learning community of co-experts across various content (e.g., diabetes, cancer, HIV, maternal and child health, mental health) and contexts (e.g., rural populations, women, ethnic minorities) to identify and discuss critical aspects of peer
support interventions, their effects, dissemination, and sustainability. Ultimately, Peers for Progress, in collaboration with a broader network of peer support affiliates, aims to raise the visibility of evidence for and benefits of peer support programs, not just as affordable health care for poor people, but as good health care for all people.

Reprinted from the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation 2011 Spring Bulletin. A PDF of the Bulletin is available on the AAFP website.

L.A. Net Releases Report on the 2010 AHRQ Consensus Meeting on Practice Facilitation as a Resource for Primary Care Improvements

LA_Net — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:48:57 +0000

In 2010, L.A. Net convened a panel of 30 experts from the U.S. and Canada to discuss the state of the field of practice facilitation as a quality improvement resource for primary care practices and as support for patient centered medical home care model transformation. This report summarizes the discussions during that meeting. Several of our network members participated, including: Grace Floutsis, MD, Lyndee Knox, PhD, John Kotick, JD, June Levine, RN, MSN and Richard Seidman, MD.

Practice facilitators are specially trained individuals who work with primary care practices “to make meaningful changes designed to improve patients outcomes. [They] help physicians and improvement teams develop the skills they need to adapt clinical evidence to the specific circumstance of their practice environment” (DeWalt et al, 2010).

The report on the AHRQ 2010 Consensus Meeting is available to read and to download on the L.A. Net website.

A wiki version of this report is also available online that allows readers to add comments and materials to the report.

L.A. Net a Recipient of ARRA Funds to Transform Primary Care Practices

LA_Net — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 23:38:22 +0000

PBRNews—Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, $300 million was directed to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to support comparative effectiveness research (now known as patient-centered outcomes research). Over the past 12 months, AHRQ has issued multiple Requests for Applications and thousands of applications were submitted, including numerous proposals from Practice-Based Research Networks (PBRNs). The agency recently announced the recipients of the ARRA awards, which will support efforts in many areas, including comparisons of health care interventions in real world settings, data infrastructure, and dissemination and implementation. A complete list of awards by category is available at AHRQ’s Recovery Act Awards page.

The exciting news for primary care PBRNs is that $20.7 million of these grants was awarded to AHRQ networks. Transforming Primary Care Practice awards (ranging from $1 to 3 million) went to a a variety of network’s nationwide, including one to a network consortium led by Oklahoma Physicians Resource/Research Network, including Wisconsin Research and Education Network, Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians Research Network, Mecklenburg Area Partnership for Primary Care Research, Clinicians Enhancing Child Health, and L.A. Net.

In 2000, AHRQ invested $1 million in infrastructure support to 18 PBRNs (average award $75,000). Other small solicitations followed. PBRNs were also supported by grant “set-asides” included in several Requests for Applications to assure that a certain number of networks received awards. In the past few years, PBRNs have competed very successfully on their own at AHRQ despite a shrinking grants funding pool. However the announcement of this large amount of grant funding to PBRNs with ARRA funds represents a high watermark for network research and strong evidence of the increasing maturity of our PBRNs.