The National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched the CARE for Health program in June 2024 to test the feasibility of a network of networks that embeds clinical research in primary care settings with the aim to improve medical care and health outcomes and strengthen public trust in science.
In September 2024, the program announced the three inaugural Research Network Hubs at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW), and West Virginia University (WVU). Each of the hubs will serve rural communities and participate in existing NIH-funded clinical studies. CARE for Health will expand the reach of existing NIH-funded studies by matching them to established rural primary care research networks.
This year, three new hubs were added to the program to increase access to ongoing NIH-supported clinical studies that cover a wide range of common conditions important to primary health care, such as obesity, hearing loss, back pain, side effects of cancer treatment, polysubstance use disorder, and osteoarthritis. In parallel, Hub awardees will also partner directly with primary care providers and their communities to identify critical clinical questions of the highest priority and contribute to the development of new innovative studies that address these questions.
The new awardee institutions are:
• University of Alabama – Birmingham (UAB), in partnership with the University of Arkansas and the University of Mississippi, established the Primary Care Health Equity through Access and Research in Transformative Networks (HEART-NET). HEART-NET aims to develop a primary care infrastructure to address clinical priorities and improve access to health care research in Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
• University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC) established the Primary Care Research in More Environments in Oklahoma (PRIME-OK). PRIME-OK will leverage existing and develop new partnerships to build and expand primary health care research across the state, including strengthening partnerships serving indigenous tribal nations in Oklahoma.
• University of New Mexico (UNM) Health Sciences Center established the Primary Care – Building Research Integration in Diverse Geographic Environments (PC-BRIDGE). PC-BRIDGE will engage with primary care partners that serve rural patients to extend research participation opportunities in New Mexico and Arizona.
“Clinical research is still new to many rural primary care practices,” said co-principal investigator Juell Homco, Ph.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of medical informatics at the OU School of Community Medicine in Tulsa, in a statement. “Part of what we will be doing is helping practices obtain data in a standardized way from their electronic health records. We have worked with 40 different electronic health records over the years, so we bring a lot of expertise there.
“Ultimately, we want to speed up the adoption of new evidence-based guidelines so that care is constantly being improved,” Homco added. “Currently, it takes an average of 17 years for results of clinical trials to be implemented into primary care practices. It shouldn’t take that long for the latest research to benefit patients.”
As a first step, OU Health Sciences will join an existing trial on improving functional outcomes for older adults who have been treated for cancer. The trial is led by the University of Rochester in New York, which does not have sufficient access to patients living in rural, underserved and Tribal areas. The trial is studying whether a standardized intervention involving survivorship health and exercise education combined with patient assessment can improve physical function. OU Health Sciences will also evaluate whether the intervention is effective in rural areas with less access to resources – knowledge that will be critical for the network’s expansion.
OHSU will engage two FQHCs with eight clinics in rural locations to participate in a study evaluating a behavioral intervention for chronic, high-impact back pain. This study, Nonpharmacologic Pain Management in FQHC Primary Care Clinics, aims to improve pain management and reduce reliance on prescription pain medication.
Both OHSU and UW will engage a total of three FQHCs and eight clinical locations to participate in a study to treat polysubstance abuse. The study, called Collaborative Care for Polysubstance Use in Primary Care Settings, is testing a collaborative treatment intervention to address opioid use and polysubstance use, which is the unhealthy use of more than one drug, or drug(s), with alcohol.
WVU will conduct research and engage practitioners and communities at six locations across West Virginia to participate in a study for gout. The Treat-to-Target Serum Urate Versus Treat-to-Avoid Symptoms in Gout is a randomized-controlled trial evaluating interventions for gout flares prevention or treatment.
link
