The Research Tactic Team has been charged with galvanizing the research community to demonstrate primary care’s ability to meet the Quadruple Aim. They are doing this by focusing on:
- Promoting further research on the value of primary care and the role of the Primary Care Medical Home, the efficacy of comprehensive payment, and common clinical issues.
- Engaging clinicians, patients, and researchers in learning together to produce high quality research for primary care practice.
- Promoting further research about specific issues including:
- The value of primary care and the role the PCMH can play in delivering that value
- The efficacy of comprehensive payment for primary care
- Prevention, chronic illness and population health
- Equipping patients and primary care professionals with health information they can act on and give them the means to contribute useful information about their health that can feed into ongoing research.
The Research Team has been working on a number of projects, three of which are featured below in Research Tactic Team Projects:
- FMAHealth Research Fellowship
- Launch of the Starfield Summit Series
- Starfield Summit I: Advancing Primary Care Research, Policy and Patient Care
Three additional projects are scheduled to be completed in late 2017 / early 2018:
- Primary Care Research Mapping Project: This project is designed to engage family medicine organizations in the coordination of primary care research tasks and activities. By carefully analyzing, mapping, and aligning each organization’s research efforts, the Research Team plans to use findings to inform recommendations in the long-term management of strategic planning for family medicine research with focused leadership from NAPCRG.
- Research Bright Spots: In partnership with the Robert Graham Center, the Research Team has defined, identified, and interviewed bright spots in family medicine research. This project will provide insights into the factors critical to research success, uncover truths about the exciting and innovative work being done in family medicine, and present guidance for others wanting to cultivate research at their own institutions.
- Bibliographic Analyses: In a collaborative project with the Association of Departments of Family Medicine and the Robert Graham Center, the Research Team has developed a method for identifying the scholarly output of family medicine departments. Combining this method with bibliometric techniques, this project will capture the research productivity of family medicine. The team hopes that findings will highlight the stunning breadth of family medicine research and be used by the discipline to enhance its research enterprise.
Core Team
Tom Vansaghi, PhD – Team Leader; Executive Director, NAPCRG
Andrew Bazemore, MD, MPH; Director, Robert Graham Center
Jennifer Carroll MD, MPH; Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado – Denver and Network Director, AAFP National Research Network
Perry Dickinson, MD; Professor, University of Colorado — Denver
Alex Krist, MD, MPH, FAAFP; Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Population Health at Virginia Commonwealth University & Active Clinician at the Fairfax Family Practice Residency
Ronna D. New, DO; Geriatrician, Johnston Memorial Hospital
Jen DeVoe, MD, DPhil, FAAFP – FMAHealth Board Liaison to the Team; Professor and Chair, Department of Family Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University and Chief Research Officer at OCHIN
Additional Research Project Team Members / Advisors
Winston Liaw, MD, MPH
Christina Hester, PhD, MPH
Gillian Bartlett, PhD
Vivian Jiang, MD – FMAHealth Research Fellow
FMAHealth Research Fellowship
The Family Medicine for America’s Health Board, in 2016, established the FMAHealth Research Fellowship with the intention of naming one Fellow per year.
Dr. Vivian Jiang, MD has been appointed to be the first FMAHealth Research Fellow. In partnership with Fairfax Family Practice Center in Fairfax, VA and under the guidance of Research Core Team member, Dr. Alex Krist, MD, MPH, Dr. Jiang, MD will support the work of the seven Tactic Teams for the upcoming academic year.
Launch of the Starfield Summit Series
This series of galvanizing discussions pays tribute to the late Barbara Starfield, whose illustrious research career demonstrated that primary care oriented health systems have lower costs, better population health outcomes, and greater equity and access.
These Summits gather a diverse audience of leaders of many age, disciplines, and backgrounds to discuss topics of contemporary relevance to policy and primary care. They embrace Implementation Science principles, seeking to catalyze health system reform and integrate best evidence into practice.
Learn more about past summits and find details for upcoming summits in the Starfield series.
Starfield Summit I: Advancing Primary Care Research, Policy and Patient Care
The first Starfield Summit was held in April 2016 in Washington, DC. The Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies (part of the AAFP) together with partners Family Medicine for America’s Health, the Pisacano Foundation, and the American Board of Family Medicine Foundation hosted the Summit. The Summit was designed to honor and advance the legacy of Barbara Starfield, whose research demonstrated the importance of primary care in achieving the Triple Aim.
The Summit provided a unique opportunity for conversation among a diverse group of leaders in primary care research and policy, young and old, intended to galvanize its participants, generate important discussion for public consumption, and enable research and policy agenda-setting in support of primary care function as an essential catalyst in health system reform.
The Summit focused on what policymakers should know and where evidence is still needed in order to:
- Measure and pay for the primary care function;
- Train and deploy teams in primary care in order to advance Barbara Starfield’s work in support of the Triple Aim
The Summit brought together a diverse array of participants representing a host of primary care organizations in addition to the sponsors already noted, including: the Society of General Internal Medicine, the North American Primary Care Research Group, the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Association of Departments of Family Medicine, the Academic Pediatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Primary Care Progress, and others. Several federal and state agencies were also present and provided their perspectives.
The outcomes from the Summit include several products, including a series of TED-style talks, issue briefs summarizing key content, annotated bibliographies on the three primary topics of Primary Care Measurement, Payment, and Teams, peer-reviewed publications, and working papers. Materials from the summit – including speaker presentations, issue briefs and annotated bibliographies – can be found here:
Issue Briefs & Other Documents
Annotated Bibliographies on Three Primary Themes of the Summit:
1. Measures in Primary Care
Lead Author: Yalda Jabbarpour, MD
2. Effective Payment for Primary Care
Lead Author: Stephanie B. Gold, MD; Contributing Author: Brian J. Park, MD, MPH
3. Teams in Primary Care
Lead Author: Yalda Jabbarpour, MD
