Don Nease, MD, and Jack Westfall, MD, MPH/MSPH, working as consultants with Dartmouth and the Northern New England CO-OP (one of the oldest PBRNs in the country) helped co-author "Practice-Based Research Networks: Asphalt on the Blue Highways of Primary Care Research" which is part of a series of papers arising from the Family Medicine Research Summit that preceded last year’s North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) conference.
From the Publication: In response to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap 2 decades ago,1 “Blue Highways” was used as a metaphor describing the need to create and translate evidence to and from practices and communities where most individuals live and seek medical care.2 Practice-based research was identified as a key method and infrastructure needed to support the Roadmap’s translational aspirations. Practice-based research networks (PBRNs) might be thought of as the “asphalt” paving the roads for essential practice and community-based engagement. T3 translation, or translation into real world practice, quickly became a common part of the NIH Roadmap and subsequent Clinical Translational Science Awards.
PBRNs grew out of the counterculture ethos present during the birth of Family Medicine in the 1970s as a reaction to the promulgation of recommendations and guidelines derived from the highly selective denominator of academic health care centers.
Read more about this work in the publication.