Research and Data Analysis Core

The Learning Health System (LHS) model can be a powerful means of achieving integration of organizational learning across clinical, operational, and research functions to accelerate advances in health system performance and outcomes. Yet the ambitions of the LHS to drive evidence-based healthcare has not been fully realized due to many challenges: lack of standardized measures; lack of accurate and reliable data on race, ethnicity, and SDOH; lack of capacity to conduct rigorous evaluations in complex real-world environments; challenges of implementation at scale with competing demands and priorities; lack of inclusion and engagement with patient and community stakeholders about outcomes important to them; and lack of diversity in the health sciences workforce. The purpose of the Columbia-Cornell-Einstein EQUIP+ Center for Learning Health System (LHS) Science is to overcome these obstacles and build a high-functioning LHS infrastructure that supports a cadre of diverse, embedded LHS Scientists conducting PCOR/CER projects designed to improve health equity and quality. LHS research projects will function as experiential learning opportunities for the LHS Scientists, as well as important studies that aim to improve health equity and quality outcomes for hundreds of thousands diverse patients of our partner health systems. Further, research results will be widely disseminated to internal stakeholders (community, system leadership, clinical networks) and externally (scientific meetings, peer-reviewed publications, national conferences, etc.). The Research and Data Analysis Core (RDAC) of the EQUIP+ Center will provide essential components of the LHS infrastructure that will support LHS scientists by drawing upon the rich resources committed by LHS partners, including data analysts, computer/data scientists, informaticians, and the multitude of resources available through the collaborating CTSAs at Columbia, Cornell, and Einstein, as well as assets provided by the EQUIP+ Center’s Administrative and Research Education Cores (AC and REC). Additionally, the RDAC will guide LHS Scientists in participation in an annual LHS symposium, an EQUIP+ program requirement, which provides them with an opportunity to network with experts, learn from their peers, and exercise their newly honed dissemination skills. The RDAC will pursue two specific aims: Aim 1: Provide resources to develop a LHS infrastructure that supports LHS Scientists in the design, implementation, and evaluation of innovative, rigorous, and impactful LHS PCOR/CER projects focused on AHRQ and PCORI priorities.; Aim 2: Support LHS Scientists to disseminate findings to internal and external stakeholders, and identify and catalog all scientific information produced by PCOR/CER projects conducted by the EQUIP+ LHS Center. Our RDAC with myriad support elements will be of great benefit to early-stage investigators, i.e., LHS Scientists participating in EQUIP+, allowing them within two years to successfully conduct PCOR/CER to improve equity and quality, as well as position them to rapidly progress toward independent careers in LHS science.