Research
The Department of Family Medicine and Community Health (DFMCH) has an active research area, working to enhance partnerships with other academic departments and institutions and speed the uptake of innovations into practice.
Research Areas
Our research is organized into the following areas:
- Health disparities. Developing solutions to eliminate health inequities and remove barriers to care.
- Healthcare delivery. Evaluating delivery models for care, service, and education in U of M family medicine residencies and other primary care settings.
- Population health. Improving clinical and community population health (e.g., women's health, sports medicine, healthy eating across the lifespan).
#3 Family Medicine Department in NIH Funding Nationwide
We currently rank third in the nation among National Institutes of Health-funded family medicine departments! (Source: Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research)
Part of the Family Physicians Inquiries Network
The department is a member of the Family Physicians Inquiries Network (FPIN), a grassroots effort to make evidence-based family medicine and clinical scholarship more accessible to family physicians in clinical practice.
New Research Division Initiative!
The DFMCH research division will house the primary care Practice Based Research Network (PBRN) connected to the Center for Learning Health Systems Science (CLHSS) in the Medical School. The goal of the PBRN is two-fold:
- create a network of primary care clinics across the state to promote and facilitate research that matters in daily clinical practice and that is community-informed and
- create an interface for implementation scientists and experts to support key projects and RCTs, including rapid response trials, for recruitment into primary care clinical trials.
The DFMCH-PBRN infrastructure includes Research Leadership, web-based Project Portal, Project Management, Research/Practice Facilitators, and Clinician leads who are embedded in community clinics to champion, educate, and navigate the culture and diverse populations in primary care.
Research Portal - to submit clinic projects and consult requests
The web-based portal is a tool to submit research and scholarship projects across our primary care clinics. The intake process supports faculty and residents research and scholarship ideas to provide the best chance possible to become meaningful, publishable, and feasible proposals supported by department resources. This portal is more than an application: it’s a tool that aims to enhance understanding, a place to find collaborators, connects clinics to expand the project reach and will be instrumental in building out our Primary Care Practice Based Research Network (PBRN).
Request for Recruitment Assistance and Letters of Support - if you need support with recruitment efforts or a letter of support for a research project
Use this link if you are interested in partnering with our primary care clinics to expand your recruitment reach. We have provided additional detail on our clinics in this web-based portal.