BY TONI LAPP
Four years ago, the AAFP Board of Directors approved the plan for the Academy's national research network. What's happened since then? Lots. The network has two published studies under its belt, and several projects are in progress.
The mission of the National Network for Family Practice and Primary Care Research is to discover better ways of caring for patients. Network projects actively seek answers to the problems that confront primary care physicians.
"Infrastructure funding from the Academy for the research network has been critical to the network's early successes," says John Hickner, M.D., M.S., of East Lansing, Mich., network director.
The network has published the results of two studies: one on patient safety and the other on the bioterrorism preparedness of family physicians.
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"As with most descriptive research studies, these initial studies have generated more questions than they have answered -- ensuring that we have many more projects for the future!" -- John Hickner, M.D.,M.S. |
Here is an overview of current projects:
• The Pneumococcal Immunizations Among Older Adults study. Data collection began in August 2002 for this two-pronged study. The first goal of the study is to investigate the use of hand-held computers versus traditional paper methods for data collection by medical staffs in 25 practices. The data will be analyzed to compare efficiency, quality, timeliness of data collection and user satisfaction. The second goal of the study, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, is to define what segments of the over-65 population have received pneumococcal immunization, a vaccine that is recommended for elderly people. Co-investigators Richard Zimmerman, M.D., of Pittsburgh and Gregory Doyle, M.D., of Morgantown, W.Va., plan to develop an intervention trial to increase immunization rates.
• Hepatitis C Survey of Family Physicians. This survey was devised with the knowledge that many patients with hepatitis C infection go undiagnosed. The research will be used to study family physicians' clinical practices in screening, diagnosing and treating patients with hepatitis C infection. Data are being compiled and analyzed from surveys that were sent to about 1,000 members of the AAFP, as well as to 243 network members. Participants who completed the 30-item instrument were asked questions ranging from what blood tests they use for screening to their opinion of the risk of hepatitis C infection to society. By identifying barriers to treatment, the research may help improve care for patients at risk for hepatitis C infection. Barbara Yawn, M.D., of Rochester, Minn.; Jonathan Temte, M.D., of Madison, Wis.; and Elizabeth Clark, M.D. of Portland, Ore., are co-investigators for the nine-month study, funded by Schering, which began in January.
• Streamlining the Internal Review Board Process project. Protecting human research subjects is of critical importance to network researchers, who strive to balance that concern with the need to conduct meaningful studies. The time it takes to complete the internal review board process varies from one institution to another, and because physicians may be affiliated with their own separate, local IRBs, there are often duplicative reviews that take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. The hope that the review process could be improved was the impetus for this project. The desired outcome is to develop reciprocal agreements between the network's central IRB and network physicians' local IRBs and to design a more efficient method of obtaining approval for physicians not affiliated with the network's IRB. James Galliher, Ph.D., the network's research director in the AAFP Division of Scientific Activities, is principal investigator for this project.
• Other projects. To date, network researchers have also studied diabetes outcomes, alcohol screening and cancer care. "As with most descriptive research studies, these initial studies have generated more questions than they have answered," says Hickner, "ensuring that we have many more projects for the future!" *
To reach writer Toni Lapp, e-mail tlapp@aafp.org.
FP Report is published by the
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Copyright © 2003 by
American Academy of Family Physicians.