The NIH Communities Advancing Research Equity for Health™, or CARE for Health™, program announced 3 inaugural hubs for its primary care–focused clinical research network. These awards are part of a pilot project to test the feasibility of a research network that expands research opportunities to primary care settings. NIH envisions this approach will accelerate research advances for adoption into everyday healthcare to improve health outcomes and health equity for everyone.
Each of the 3 Research Network Hubs will serve rural communities and participate in existing NIH-funded clinical studies. CARE for Health will expand the reach of existing NIH-funded studies by matching them to established rural primary care research networks.
For example, the award to Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) will engage with BeatPain Utah, an NIH Collaboratory Trial focused on patients with back pain living in rural and low-income communities heavily impacted by the opioid epidemic. BeatPain Utah will be able to recruit from the OHSU network of federally qualified health centers with practices in rural locations as one of the first 3 trials linked to CARE for Health.