UCSD Center for Learning Health Systems Science

PROJECT SUMMARY OVERALL The overall objective of the proposed UCSD Learning Health Systems (LHS) Center is to provide didactic and experiential training in learning health systems science to clinicians and other scientists from diverse backgrounds. The three cores of the Center – Administrative Core, Research and Education Core, and Research and Data Analysis Core – will operate as inter-dependent parts of the Center infrastructure to support the professional development of scientists to conduct research that accelerates progress towards an integrated learning health system. By design, the Center’s LHS infrastructure and workflow present holistic opportunities for LHS Scientists to interact with their sponsors, with their cohort, and other member of the LHS community. A LHS research project funded in the Center will also provide LHS Scientists a learning opportunity encompassing the full circle of developing, executing, managing, and reporting a research project as an embedded scientist. The proposed LHS Center will enhance diversity of both the LHS Scientists as well as patients who will benefit from LHS interventions in a minimum of three safety net health systems, UCSD and two federally qualified health centers, El Centro Regional Medical Center (ECRMC) and Family Health Centers of San Diego (FHCSD), that serve disproportionally underserved and minoritized populations. Multi-channel outreach efforts will cover underrepresented minority faculty and scientists both within and outside of the UCSD health sciences programs. Healthcare professionals including nurses and social scientists such as economists and sociologists are also eligible. The proposed Center has assembled faculty members representing multiple disciplines, gender, race, and age. Many of them specialize in health equity and are national leaders in reducing racial disparities in access to health services. All of them are engaged in research efforts that are well aligned with AHRQ/PCORI’s priorities. Their projects offer LHS Scientists experiential education opportunities that will be highly beneficial in preparation for their own research project. The proposed Center aims to (1) mentor and train clinicians and other scientists in competencies of learning health systems, organizational transformation, hypothesis generation and testing, data management and analysis, patient and stakeholder engagement, and how to apply research insights to address health system priorities in real world practice workflow; (2) to support and train LHS Scientists in sophisticated methods of deriving study-relevant structured and unstructured data from the electronic health record system and gain competencies in mixed methods research; and (3) to facilitate bidirectional asset-based community development opportunities for implementation of learning health systems pragmatic research in resource constrained care environments with diverse and underserved populations and in academic health systems with a broad range of deep expertise.