Funding Allows Baylor to Extend Family Medicine Research

The Department of Family and Community Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine has received funding for nearly $500,000, to increase its research efforts in family medicine.

The three-year project, titled "Academic Administrative Units in Family Medicine," is being sponsored by the Bureau of Health Professions of the Health Resources and Services Administration. It gets under way Sept. 29 and runs through Sept. 28, 2003.

"The purpose is to develop the research infrastructure and help Baylor become a leader in primary care research," said Dr. Robert Volk, vice chair for research for the department.

The first goal, will be to establish a primary care research partnership among health care organizations from the greater Houston area. Partners will include the Harris County Hospital District and its Community Health Centers, Health Care for the Homeless Houston Inc., Kelsey-Seybold Clinic and Kelsey-Seybold Research Foundation, and Baylor Family Medicine, the clinical site for the department.

The second, will be to pull Baylor's academic and scientific resources into the mix and create a primary care research database.

"The idea is to create a laboratory for primary care research, and we plan to use technology-oriented and Web-based approaches to collect data in this lab," said Dr. Volk.

Baylor will then conduct pilot and demonstration studies, to make it more competitive for external grant funding. It also will submit applications to extend the partnership beyond three years.

"Once we put the infrastructure in place, it will allow us to lay the foundation for a strong and vibrant research program, emphasizing clinical effectiveness in primary care," said Dr. Volk.

Dr. Volk added that the department, which was created on April 1, 1997 with the merger of the former Family Medicine and Community Medicine departments, is one of the largest at Baylor, with around 100 faculty and staff members.

"We've got the clinical expertise here at Baylor," said Dr. Volk. "We want to put it to better use and broaden the research we're doing, to improve the delivery of health care services to the community."

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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