SPIRIT K12

SPIRIT K12 Center of Excellence in Learning Health System Researcher Training

Welcome from the SPIRIT K12 Directors

As Co-Directors of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)-funded Stakeholder-Partnered Implementation Research and Innovation Translation (SPIRIT) K12 Center of Excellence, we welcome you to our web site. Over the 2019–2020 period of Center operations, we shall be expanding our menu of web site utilities and tools to serve the needs of all SPIRIT stakeholders and to share resources with the other K12 centers nationwide within the AHRQ-PCORI Learning Health Systems Consortium as well as with the broader community of health system researchers and policy analysts, and the public at large, who have an interest in scientific discoveries and innovations that improve the accessibility, safety, quality, and outcomes of health care at the individual, population, and health system levels.

The SPIRIT K12 Center is organized as a partnership among UCLA, Kaiser Permanente Southern California, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, and Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, bringing into alignment four distinctive health care systems that are collaboratively supporting mentored postdoctoral research career development of the next generation of interdisciplinary team members, leaders, and innovators in patient-centered outcomes research conducted within and responsive to the needs and priorities of patients, providers, and learning health systems. In our collective, multidisciplinary effort to bridge the gap between research and practice for improved patient outcomes and health system performance, SPIRIT encompasses an additional special focus on historically underserved minority and low-income populations, who evidence wide disparities in care access and outcomes. In overall mission, SPIRIT is designed to advance knowledge of care design, delivery, and implementation strategies for rapid and sustainable uptake of scientifically proven interventions across diverse real-world health care settings and populations. The current SPIRIT roster of core research and health care system executive mentors, all of whom will serve through annual rotation on the Executive Steering Committee, the main governing body of our K12 Center, can be accessed here.

To all prospective applicants

In addition to mentored, hands-on research projects, to be conducted within our four partnering health care systems, the SPIRIT K12 program will offer a state-of-the-art curricular experience to our scholars, evolving annually and encompassing both required and elective elements. The curriculum development effort will be guided in part by competencies in Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) and Learning Health Systems (LHS) research, and will be organized within this general framework.

We anticipate that our next Call for Applications, for Cohort II of the SPIRIT K12, will be in January 2021. Announcement of that application cycle, and details about how to apply, will be posted here at the web site at that time.