He STAR Clinical Research Networkbased at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), has added two new partners: Essentia Health, a rural health system based in Minnesota, and Stanford University School of Medicine.
The Stakeholder, Technology and Research Clinical Research Network (STAR CRN) supports comparative effectiveness studies, pragmatic clinical trials, health systems innovation, and other patient-centered research aimed at improving healthcare delivery and outcomes. health outcomes.
STAR CRN has focused research to improve health in many common and rare diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, COVID-19, vasculitis and other conditions.
Recent studies have included the relationship between COVID-19 and diabetes, as well as interventions to treat COVID-19. The STAR CRN also participated in a national trial that found that a single daily aspirin for infants or adults was equally safe and effective for preventing adverse cardiovascular events in patients with established cardiovascular disease.
Funded by the nonprofit Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the STAR CRN spans 10 health care systems, dozens of academic and community hospitals, and hundreds of outpatient practices and healthcare stakeholders. community. Includes standardized electronic health record (EHR) data from more than 15 million patients nationwide.
In addition to VUMC and now Essentia Health and Stanford, members include Vanderbilt Healthcare Affiliated Network, Meharry Medical College, University of North Carolina Health Care System, Duke Health Care System, Medical University of South Carolina, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist and the Mayo Clinic .
“The expansion of STAR CRN to include Stanford and Essentia enhances our ability to engage diverse communities across the country in patient-centered research,” said Russell Rothman, MD, MPP, STAR CRN principal investigator and senior vice president of population. from VUMC. and Public Health.
Rothman, the Ingram Professor of Integrative and Population Health and professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and Health Policy, also directs the Vanderbilt Institute of Medicine and Public Health.
Essentia Health is a nonprofit rural community health system based in northern Minnesota that spans northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, and a small region of Michigan. It encompasses 14 hospitals, 78 clinics and more than 2,200 doctors and advanced professionals.
“We are pleased to join the STAR Clinical Research Network and look forward to the many clinically relevant opportunities this represents for our patients and communities,” said Stephen Waring, DVM, Ph.D., senior scientist at the Essentia Institute for Rural Health. in a sentence. “This allows us to expand our interests and expertise in patient-centered research that focuses on the patient voice to help guide the work we do, similar to studies we have already participated in, such as ADAPTABLE, PREVENTABLE, PRECIDENTD and ACTIV -6”. Waring said.
“We are delighted to have Stanford join STAR CRN as its first West Coast partner,” said principal investigator Tina Hernandez-Boussard, Ph.D., MPH, associate dean for research and professor of medicine at Stanford, in a release. . “We have a rich and deep tradition of faculty conducting innovative comparative effectiveness studies and leveraging the diversity of our patient population and established EHR platforms,” she said. “We look forward to a productive and successful collaboration with all STAR CRN partners.”
In 2014, VUMC received its first PCORI grant to establish what was then called the Mid-South Clinical Data Research Network as part of the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network. In 2019, with the addition of Mayo Clinic and Wake Forest Baptist Health, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the network changed its name to STAR CRN.
