The five-year, $40 million initiative to fund the training of clinician and research scientists will be managed by AHRQ and jointly funded by AHRQ and PCORI.
The Learning Health System Centers of Excellence are:
• A Chicago Center of Excellence in Learning Health Systems Research Training (ACCELERAT), Northwestern University, Chicago, Ill.
• CATALyST: Consortium for Applied Training to Advance the Learning Health System with Scholars/Trainees, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, Seattle, Wash.
• Learning Health System Scholar Program at Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.
• Leveraging Infrastructure to Train Investigators in Patient-Centered Outcomes Research in Learning Health System (LITI- PCORLHS), Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Ind.
• Minnesota Learning Health System Mentored Career Development Program (MN-LHS), University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.
• NW Center of Excellence & K12 in Patient Centered Learning Health Systems Science, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Ore.
• PEDSnet Scholars: A Training Program for Pediatric Learning Health System Researchers, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa.
• Stakeholder-Partnered Implementation Research and Innovation Translation (SPIRIT) program, University of California- Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Calif.
• The Center of Excellence in Promoting LHS Operations and Research at Einstein/Montefiore (EXPLORE), Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, N.Y.
• Transforming the Generation and Adoption of PCOR into Practice (T-GAPP), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.
• University of California-San Francisco Learning Health System K12 Career Development Program, University of California- San Francisco, San Francisco, Calif.
The new Centers of Excellence funded under this initiative will produce the next generation of learning health system researchers to conduct patient-centered outcome research and implement the results to improve quality of care and patient outcomes. Newly trained clinician and research scientists will work within health systems by collaborating with systems’ leaders and conducting studies to address how healthcare organizations can improve patient outcomes.
“The researchers supported by this initiative will support efforts to bring healthcare systems, clinicians and patients fully into the process of developing the data needed to better support personalized medical decision-making,” said PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, M.D., M.P.H. in a prepared statement. “The ultimate goal for PCORI and AHRQ is to bring rigorous science to produce generalizable evidence that improves the quality of care and the health of individuals, both within and beyond these centers of excellence. These awards will help to grow the number of researchers with the knowledge and skill to learn from the real-world practice going on within their delivery systems and the real-world data being generated in ever-increasing quantity.”
The Indianapolis-based center features a partnership between the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Regenstrief Institute.
A release from Regenstrief quotes Peter Embi, M.D., president and CEO of Regenstrief and co-principal investigator: “Every patient-care encounter is an opportunity to learn and improve the way we care for others. As health care becomes increasingly data-driven and a source of real-world evidence for improving care and quality, it is critical that we train experts who can create, study and sustain learning health systems. We are excited to work with our academic and health care partners as we launch this innovative program, and to be part of the first group supported to train the health system researchers of the future.”
