Dr. Onil Bhattacharyya MD, PhD is the Frigon Blau Chair in Family Medicine Research at Women’s College Hospital, and director of the Institute for Health Systems Solutions and Virtual Care. He is the lead for the Centre for Digital Health Evaluation and the co-chair of the Canadian Primary Care Research Network funded by CIHR. He practices family medicine and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. He has been a Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Commonwealth Fund in New York City and a Takemi Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Plenary Preview:

Choose your own adventure: PBRNs, primary care learning health systems and everything in between

Practice Based Research Networks have been in place for many years, and their key functions have included clinician engagement in research, trial coordination and creation of primary care information systems. This presentation will provide an overview of the Canadian Primary Care Research Network and the characteristics of 21 local, regional and provincial PBRNs that it supports. It will present a draft PBRN maturity model defining the various components and capabilities of PBRNs as a series of strategic choices for individual networks. These components can support functions such as community engagement, clinical quality improvement, research or learning at the health system level. Engagement of patients, providers, researchers and policymakers will also be explored both as enablers of the growth of PBRNs and as an end in itself. The increasing role of patients in PBRNs across Canada will also be explored. This will be presented by the co-chair of the Canadian Primary Care Research Network and the co-chair of its Patient Advisory Committee. The session will engage attendees to explore how the emerging model in Canada contrasts with models in the US, the UK and elsewhere so that PBRNs can build a scale that primary care to contribute and benefit from learning across health systems.

Wilson D. Pace, MD, FAAFP Chief Medical and Technology Officer, DARTNet Institute is a Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado, Denver, the Green-Edelman Chair Emeritus for Practice-based Research, and the past Director of the American Academy of Family Physicians National Research Network. Dr. Pace’s research has focused on patient centered health information technology, behavioral change (both patient and clinician behavior), practice reorganization and patient safety. He served on the Institute of Medicine’s committee studying the recognition and prevention of medication errors and on the National Institutes of Health Expert Workgroup 4 that updated the asthma guidelines in 2020. He is the primary architect of the DARTNet Institute, an organization dedicated to the better use of existing electronic health data, practice-based research and adding the patient voice to health data

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PBRNs and Data: Where we have been, where are we going?

Dr. Pace will highlight the role data played in the practices of the Vanguard clinicians credited with laying the foundations for practice-based research and practice-based research networks (PBRNs). How their approaches to data collection and considerations of practice-population elucidation was picked up and transformed by early PBRNs. In particular, how data collection at the point of care, during routing clinical care, became a hallmark of early PBRN work, that has persisted. The impact of electronic health record data on PBRN activities, doors opened, problems created and can PBRNs survive without EHR data will be explored. The talk finishes up with a discussion of how artificial intelligence/machine learning is impacting health care in general, primary care specifically and what opportunities it may offer PBRNs.

Emily M. Godfrey, MD MPH is a Professor in the Department of Family Medicine, with a joint appointment in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Washington. She is a family physician, with a clinical focus on women’s healthcare. She is a core faculty member of the University of Washington Family Medicine Research Section.

Dr. Godfrey is the co-founder and inaugural board chair of a nationally recognized patient-engaged research organization, the Cystic Fibrosis Reproductive and Sexual Health Collaborative (CFReSHC.org). She is the leading author of several articles related to patient-engaged research and web-based resources, including a patient-engaged training manual that provides discrete steps, tools and resources to specifically help research teams to integrate and maintain patients throughout the research cycle from question formation to publication of findings. 

Dr. Godfrey earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and holds a Medical Degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin. She completed a family medicine residency at the West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, Illinois. She is a graduate of the Complex Fellowship in Family Planning, and holds a Master of Public Health Degree from the University of Rochester. Her national professional experience includes: Association of Reproductive Health Professionals Board Member, current Vice Chair of the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) Program Committee, current member of the CDC U.S. MEC and SPR Guideline Development Group. She is also on the Upstream National Medical Advisory Committee, and is a current TEACH Early Abortion Training Curriculum Advisory Committee member.

She also holds fellowships in the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Society of Family Planning. She is a three-time recipient of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Ambassador Scholarship Award. She received the University of Illinois Faculty Mentoring Award and the Linda K. Gunzburger Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship from the University of Illinois Department of Family Medicine, and was recognized for her extraordinary contribution to the health and well-being of women by Sara Feigenholtz of the Illinois House of Representatives.

Plenary Preview:

Patient Engaged Research Session 

Primary care Practice-Based Research Networks (PBRNs) are important laboratories for surveillance and research for the millions of patients who are seen in primary care clinics daily. Research studies that have been informed by patients who seek care in PBRN clinics are especially valuable because patient-engaged research helps study teams focus on research questions that matter to patients, develop research protocols that make patient recruitment feasible and gain insights about how lived experiences may play into study findings. In this plenary session, attendees will learn about four outstanding PBRN research studies that touch on both the power of patient engagement and conducting research through a primary care PBRN. The first two presentations will touch on the “how to” of community engagement, including techniques that optimize community member participation in hard-to-reach rural areas and how to support community members unanswered questions that subsequently inform funded research projects. In the last two presentations, we hear about two large studies that used rigorous research methods within primary care PRBRNs, exemplifying the power of PBRNs in creating research findings that are immediately relevant to primary care clinicians and translated into daily practice.