Research, Collaborations, and Support

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Generating relevant, actionable new knowledge through collaboration is at the heart of the CHI Center’s mission. With visionary support from individuals and organizations, we took part in dozens of research studies and collaborations across disciplines and borders.

Strengthening Community Health and Equity

Supporting Communities in Achieving Equity and Better Health: Reducing health disparities in Cleveland by focusing on nutrition, environmental design, the role of community health workers, and resource referrals. 

Funded by Centers for Disease Control REACH program

Bridges Out of Poverty, Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin' By World, and R Rules: Helping people build understanding, opportunities and resources to transition from poverty.

Funded by American Cancer Society, Nova Institute for Health, Dr. Mirfee Ungier & Joshua D. Ungier

National Infrastructure for Mitigating the Impact of COVID-19 within Racial and Ethnic Minority Communities: Delivering education and information on resources to help fight the pandemic. 

Funded by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health

Multi-Level Interventions to Reduce Caries Disparities in Primary Care Settings: A behavioral and implementation intervention to increase dental attendance among low-income children. 

Funded by National Institute of Dental & Craniofacial Research

 

Fostering the Health of Northeast Ohio

Health Improvement Partnership-Cuyahoga: Building opportunities for community-wide health in Cuyahoga County. 

Cuyahoga County Board of Health: CHI Center members played key roles including population health liaison, medical director, COVID-19 Physician Response Team members, preventive medicine residency faculty, and student supervisors/faculty. 

Citizens’ Advisory Council on Equity: Developing Cuyahoga County’s equity goals, strategies, and programs. 

Collaborative Cuyahoga County Community Health Assessment and Improvement Plan: A collaboration to identify and address community health needs and assets. 

Funded by HealthComp Foundation and the Charles Kent Smith, MD and Patricia Hughes Moore, MD Professorship in Medical Student Education in Family Medicine

 

Advancing Community Based System Dynamics

Cross-Sector Innovation Initiative: A community-based system dynamics project to understand structural racism and identify/act on leverage points.

Supported by Public Health National Center for Innovations with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Pamela B. Davis MD PhD Professorship

Building a Foundation for Equity Science in Community Health: Evaluates an equity-grounded community health improvement plan using community based system dynamics.

Funded by Cleveland Clinical & Translational Science Collaborative and the Pamela B. Davis MD PhD Professorship

Food System Resiliency for Children’s Healthy Living:  Using system dynamics to develop a food systems model to prevent chronic disease and test food supply chain resiliency.

Funded by United States Department of Agriculture

 

The Larry A. Green Center: Advancing Primary Health Care for the Public Good

Funded by American Board of Family Medicine Foundation, Andrew and Corey Morris-Singer Foundation, Samueli Foundation, Nova Institute for Health, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Measuring What Matters in and from Primary Care: A patient-reported measure to assess important, often missed aspects of primary care.

Funded by American Board of Family Medicine Foundation and the Dorothy Jones Weatherhead Professorship 

Studying Primary Care and Patient Response to COVID-19: National surveys and analyses of COVID-19’s impact.

Funded by Andrew and Corey Morris-Singer Foundation, Samueli Foundation, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Novel, High-Impact Studies Evaluating Health System and Healthcare Professional Responsiveness to COVID-19:  A mixed methods learning evaluation of quick surveys of primary care clinicians and patients to examine the rapid adoption of digital health and its impact.

Funded by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

American Board of Family Medicine Fellowship: Supporting research and scholarship to advance understanding of generalism and primary care. 

Funded by American Board of Family Medicine Foundation

 

Strengthening Community-Based Practice

The Wisdom of Practice Initiative: Systematic investigation of exemplary clinicians, students, and practices to rediscover the essence of integrated, personalized health care, and make that understanding accessible to physicians, patients, and a new generation.

Funded by University Suburban Health Center Foundation, the Dorothy Jones Weatherhead Professorship, and the Charles Kent Smith, MD and Patricia Hughes Moore, MD Professorship in Medical Student Education in Family Medicine 

Practice Innovations for Equity: A study of the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on health care delivery, quality and equity for people living with multiple chronic conditions.

Funded by National Institute on Aging

Primary Care as Social Capital: A pilot program in clinical practice to address the conditions of individual and community poverty.

Funded by Nova Institute for Health and the Charles Kent Smith, MD and Patricia Hughes Moore, MD Professorship in Medical Student Education in Family Medicine

 

Improving Health and Health Care

Medicare Annual Wellness Visit Practice Redesign Toolkit: A Tailored Intervention to Improve Preventive Health Service Use:  A multilevel intervention to increase annual well visit use and use of services supported by scientific evidence.

Funded by National Institute on Aging

Ohio COVID-19 Modeling Collaborative: Providing accurate near-term projections of COVID-19 activity in Northern Ohio.

Funded by Case Western Reserve University, University of Akron, and the Dorothy Jones Weatherhead Professorship 

Characterize Multifaceted Interactions Between COVID-19 and Alcohol Use Disorder: A study based on real-time analysis of electronic health records of 62 million adult patients.

Funded by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

Disseminating Evidence to Promote Patient-Centered Diabetes Self-Management Strategies: Aims to improve the uptake of patient-centered diabetes self-management strategies in a regional practice-based research network of federally qualified health centers.

Funded by Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute

Empowering Communities to Stop the Spread of Antibiotic Resistant Infections through Accessible Health Information: Promotes the use of National Library of Medicine consumer health information and other databases in communities with high prevalence of community-associated antibiotic resistant skin and soft tissue infections.

Funded by National Library of Medicine

Choose2Quit: Improving Equity in Smoking Cessation for Low-Income Adults: Evaluating a personalized guidance and choice approach to tobacco cessation.

Funded by American Cancer Society

Forecasting Lung Transplant Benefit: A Dynamic Risk Modeling Approach: Improving the Lung Allocation Score system by addressing illness progression, transplant timing, and allocation strategies.

Funded by National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network: Providing infrastructure to develop, coordinate, and conduct multiple collaborative proof-of-concept studies and interventional protocols to improve cardiovascular disease outcomes.

Funded by National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Achieving Outstanding Cardiovascular Health Outcomes for All Ohioans: A Statewide Cardiovascular Health Collaborative (Cardio-OH): Aiming to improve cardiovascular and diabetes health outcomes and eliminate disparities in Ohio's Medicaid population.

Funded by Ohio Department of Medicaid

An Integrated Reverse Engineering Approach Toward Rapid Drug Repositioning for Alzheimer’s Disease: Developing an innovative integrated drug repositioning strategy to rapidly identify anti-Alzheimer’s disease drug candidates.

Funded by National Institute on Aging

Combine Computational Prediction, Network Analysis and Genetic Screening In C Elegans To Uncover Neurodegenerative Causes in Alzheimer's Disease: An integrated systems biology approach combining computational genetics prediction, network analysis, and genetic screening in C. elegans to uncover neurodegenerative causes of Alzheimer's disease.

Funded by National Institute on Aging

Drug Repurposing for Cocaine Use Disorder (CUD) Using a Combined Strategy of Artificial Intelligence-Based Prediction and Retrospective Clinical Corroboration: Identifying and evaluating potential anti-CUD drugs by developing artificial intelligence-powered drug discovery technologies.

Funded by National Institute on Drug Abuse

Connect2CWRU: A collaborative, evidence-based approach to enhance and expand available mental health and substance use services for students.

Funded by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

 

Advancing Cancer Prevention and Control

Northeast Ohio Cancer Assessment and Surveillance Engine: Data/expertise for disparities research, community health, and advocacy.

Funded by Case Western Reserve University

Comprehensive Cancer Center Population Cancer Analytics Shared Resource: Cancer analytics services for cancer investigators

Funded by Case Western Reserve University

Cognitive Impairment, Multimorbidity, and End-Of Life Care in Older Cancer Patients: A deep look at cancer treatment for nursing home patients near the end of life.

Funded by National Cancer Institute

 

Exploring Equity and Innovation in Education and Research 

Cleveland Clinical & Translational Science Collaborative - Co-lead, Community & Collaboration Shared Resource: Fostering team science through effective interdisciplinary teams with engaged stakeholders to accelerate the translation of discoveries to patients and communities.

Funded by National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

Scholarship in Curricular Development: Part of a national effort to transform medical education across the continuum.

Funded by Cleveland Clinical & Translational Science Collaborative, the Charles Kent Smith, MD and Patricia Hughes Moore, MD Professorship in Medical Student Education in Family Medicine, Dr. Mirfee Ungier & Joshua D. Ungier, American Medical Association

Engaging Patients as Partners in Patient Centered Outcomes Research in the Primary Care Safety Net:  Creating infrastructure that enables patients to engage in the full spectrum of the research process in a practice-based research network.

Funded by Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute

OCHIN, Inc: Developing collaborative research with OCHIN, a not-for-profit health information and innovation network, under a research service agreement.

Funded by OCHIN, Inc.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity: Bringing underrepresented researchers and communities into AI/ML development; improving the technology’s ability to address health disparities and inequities.

Funded by National Institutes of Health

Empowering People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities to Engage as Partners in Research: Building capacity for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to engage as partners in patient-centered outcomes and comparative effectiveness research by creating needed infrastructure.

Funded by Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute

Involving Communities in Delivering and Disseminating Health Disparity Interventions: Training community members to review journal manuscripts to increase health disparity population input in disseminating research findings.

Funded by National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities