Using Public Health PBRN Research to Inform Policy & Practice

The Public Health Practice-Based Research Networks Program is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that supports research networks dedicated to producing new scientific knowledge on how best to organize, finance, and deliver public health strategies in realworld practice settings. This body of scientific inquiry, known as Public Health Services and Systems Research (PHSSR), is a rapidly developing area of scholarship within the larger fields of public health research and health services research. A public health practice-based research network (PBRN) brings multiple public health organizations into collaboration with an academic research center for the purposes of designing and implementing PHSSR studies in real-world practice settings. Participating public health professionals and researchers collaborate to identify pressing research questions of interest, design rigorous and relevant studies, execute research effectively and efficiently, and translate findings rapidly into practice

Building a Sustainable Public Health PBRN: Tips for Securing Ongoing Research Funding

Diversify your network’s research funding base. The Public Health PBRN Program funding made available by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provides start-up resources and initial research support for networks, but networks will require larger and more sustainable sources of funding for public health research as they progress. The most ample sources can be found in federal funding agencies that operate competitive extramural research programs, include CDC, NIH, AHRQ, HRSA, USDA, and NSF. Public health research funding is also available from state and foundation sources, and even corporate sources (e.g. Pfizer’s Public Health Research Fellowship Program). For sustainability, networks should look to diversify their sources of funding for research projects and avoid reliance on a single source for very long. The research and demonstration opportunities created by the federal Affordable Care Act, and the growing emphasis on translational and community-based research at NIH, provide particularly compelling funding opportunities for public health PBRNs

National Longitudinal Survey of Public Health Systems: 2011-2012 Wave

Since 1998, researchers have followed a nationally representative cohort of U.S. communities to examine the types of public health activities performed within the community, the range of organizations contributing to each activity, and the perceived effectiveness of each activity in addressing community needs. This information, obtained through a validated survey of local public health officials, provides an in-depth view of the structure and function of local public health delivery systems and how these systems evolve over time. Originally conducted with support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Longitudinal Survey of Public Health Systems (NLSPHS) was fielded for the first time in 1998, with a follow-up survey conducted in 2006 as part of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded project to develop an evidence-based typology of local public health delivery systems. Each wave of the survey has been linked with data on local health departments collected from the prior year’s National Profile of Local Health Departments survey conducted by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), allowing for an in-depth view of how local health departments relate to the multi-organizational delivery systems in which they operate. These data, linked with still other data sources on community demographic, health, and economic characteristics, have supported a wide array of studies regarding the organization, financing, and delivery of public health services and provided considerable insight into policy and administrative mechanisms for improving the practice of public health

Public Health PBRNs: Generating Evidence for Policy & Practice

The Public Health Practice-Based Research Networks Program is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that supports the development of research networks for studying the comparative effectiveness, efficiency and equity of public health strategies deployed in real-world practice settings. A practice-based research network (PBRN) brings multiple public health agencies together with research partners to design and implement studies of population-based strategies that prevent disease and injury and promote health. Participating practitioners and researchers collaborate to identify pressing research questions of interest, design rigorous and relevant studies, execute research effectively, and translate findings rapidly into practice. As such, PBRNs represent vehicles for expanding the volume and quality of practice-based research needed for evidence-based decision-making in public health. The Public Health PBRN Program is based at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, under the direction of Dr. Glen Mays

Mapping European research networks

This paper proposes a framework for measuring the performance and mappingthe geography of the European Research Area (ERA) based on the analysis of existingresearch and knowledge networks. The objective is to provide insights into the spatialstructure of the European space from the perspective of the distribution of excellence inresearch. Starting from the debate on European spatial development, key issues such aspolycentricity, the territorial dimension and impact of European policies, the role of researchinvestments as an engine of urban and regional development, the paper explores thepotential use of integrating social network analysis and GIS in the evaluation of the spatialrelationalstructure of the European Research Area. The research uses data on theparticipation of academic and business research actors into research projects funded by theEuropean Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme. This paper proposes a framework for measuring the performance and mappingthe geography of the European Research Area (ERA) based on the analysis of existingresearch and knowledge networks. The objective is to provide insights into the spatialstructure of the European space from the perspective of the distribution of excellence inresearch. Starting from the debate on European spatial development, key issues such aspolycentricity, the territorial dimension and impact of European policies, the role of researchinvestments as an engine of urban and regional development, the paper explores thepotential use of integrating social network analysis and GIS in the evaluation of the spatialrelationalstructure of the European Research Area. The research uses data on theparticipation of academic and business research actors into research projects funded by theEuropean Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme

Protocol

hyperviso

An exploratory social network analysis of academic research networks

For several decades, academics around the world have been collaborating with the view to support the development of their research domain. Having said that, the majority of scientific and technological policies try to encourage the creation of strong inter-related research groups in order to improve the efficiency of research outcomes and subsequently research funding allocation. In this paper, we attempt to highlight and thus, to demonstrate how these collaborative networks are developing in practice. To achieve this, we have developed an automated tool for extracting data about joint article publications and analyzing them from the perspective of social network analysis. In this case study, we have limited data from works published in 2010 by England academic and research institutions. The outcomes of this work can help policy makers in realising the current status of research collaborative networks in England

The dynamics of research networks in Brite-Euram

Network formation within the BRITE-EURAM program is investigated. We describe the role of the hub of the network, which is defined as the set of main contractors that account for most of the participations. We study the effects that the conflict of objectives within European research funding between precompetitive research vs. European cohesion has on the formation of networks and on the relationship between different partners of the network. A panel data set is constructed including the second and third framework of the Brite–Euram program. A model of joint production of research results is used to test for changes in the behavior of partners within the two frameworks. The main findings are that participations are very concentrated, that is a small group of institutions account for most of the participations, but going from the second to the third framework the presence of subcontractors and single participants increases substantially. This result is reinforced by the fact that main contractors receive smaller spill-ins within networks, but spill-ins increase from the second to the third framework.mathematical economics and econometrics ;