Policy for Partnering with FMCH Partners and Affiliates
Department of Family Medicine and Community Health
UMass Chan Medical School
Clinical Research Conducted in DFMCH Practice Sites
| The Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at UMass Chan is one of the leading Family Medicine Departments nationally in conducting practice-based clinical research. As part of our overall Strategic Plan, the Department has established a vision and mission to promote the highest standards of patient care, education, and research in Family Medicine and; in Community Health, and is committed to improving the health of populations, with special emphasis on those most vulnerable. DFMCH is committed to promoting the new vision of translational science to speed the delivery of new biomedical science advances into clinical care and to conduct epidemiological and health services research to improve the health of populations and the quality of the health care delivery system. |
Our research goals focus on health promotion and disease prevention and on innovative approaches to delivering evidence-based practice in primary care, with a particular priority on eliminating socioeconomic and racial health disparities. Important to our own research and to consideration of studies conducted with other UMass Chan academic departments is valuing a bidirectional, collaborative relationship that recognizes the needs of clinical sites to deliver high quality care and medical education while simultaneously fostering important clinical and health services research. To this end, the Department has established a Practice-Based Research Network with a governance structure to facilitate participatory processes in the development of clinical research. In addition, our primary partnerships at the medical school, including ForHealth Consulting, the Department of Quantitative Health Science, the Prevention Research Center, and the Meyers Primary Care Institute, are organized to enhance community-engaged research. Department investigators also collaborate with many community health centers in central Massachusetts in the conduct of research.
The Department wishes to foster innovative and important clinical research that is consistent with the values and mission of the Department, whether conducted by DFMCH faculty or proposed by other researchers either inside or outside of UMass Chan. Recognizing that there will be increasing demands on departmental practice sites to engage in translational and population health research, the Department has established a set of principles and a research evaluation process for investigators proposing studies in DFMCH and its affiliated clinical sites.
The principles and policies and the required process for submission of research proposals requesting access to DFMCH clinical sites are outlined in the following documents: