How do your clinical and research roles influence and interact with one another?
We are the best people to really have an understanding of how the health care system works and how we can get our patients the most patient- centered care in a way that they can understand and be successful in accessing that care.
Hunter Holt MD MAS
Assistant Professor, Family and Community Medicine
University of Illinois at Chicago
Kevin Grumbach - A duty to close the loop
“I think all of us are what I'd call embedded engaged researchers whose ultimate goal is to see how research can then translate into things being better whether at the macro system level or in our own practice. I feel we have a deep responsibility to take what we learned from our research and at the very least make sure that helps shape better practice environments at our own local practices."
Hunter Holt - We are experts in how the healthcare system works
“When I talk about research projects, it's about: how do we improve the clinical care and how do we connect better with other healthcare systems? How do we connect the community members that are in independent FQs or community health systems and trying to get to the tertiary healthcare systems/ How do we link them better?… So...I've been like this beacon for people help get them the care they need.”
"Because of our training and because of the necessity of us to interact with every specialty, with every part of the hospital...we are the best people to really have an understanding of how the healthcare system works and how we can get our patients the most patient-centered care in a way that they can understand and be successful in accessing that care. And so that's really my final reflection of why I continue to see patients because it's where I find my North Star, but that's also where I find my North Star for my research as well."
Michael Potter - We help people come up with research designs that are realistic and patient-centered
Dr. Potter recounted when his team came up with the idea to give people the opportunity to get a FIT kit for colorectal cancer screening once a year at the time of their flu shot. The team received funding, the research expanded, and Flu-FIT inspired many other research projects across the country. “I don't think that work would have happened if I were not a practicing family doctor in the Family Health Center, where we had a team of people with clinical experience willing to help us understand how to overcome the many challenges of implementing this program with a multilingual and underinsured population.”
Dr. Potter also said that being a family physician enables him to approach research differently. “We usually focus on interventions that have a chance to improve health outcomes and that can be sustained after the research is done. I think one of the things about being a family medicine researcher is our central role in serving as an ambassador to communities and really making sure that the patient voice is heard in research,” he added.
Anjana Sharma - “We are the moral compass of healthcare”
"I think the lens, the torch that I hope to carry is that we are the ethical compass, the moral compass of health care, and that we're bringing, we bring our magic is really, it's not just a cell, a DNA, a gene. It's the biopsychosocial ecological framework. It's about the environments that shape someone's wellness and their communities that really shape someone's wellbeing. And so my hope is that we continue to push for better questions, better designs, and better methods that actually answer things that are actually useful for communities that we serve.