Partnering to Advance Health Equity and a Welcome Opportunity to Gather: Proceedings From the 28th Annual Conference of the Health Care Systems Research Network.

Abstract

In April 2022, the Health Care Systems Research Network (HCSRN) - a consortium of 20 research institutions affiliated with large health systems spread across the United States (and one in Israel) - held its 28th annual conference in Pasadena, California, with 275 researchers, health care colleagues, and external academic partners in attendance. With a conference theme of "Promoting Collaboration and Partnerships to Advance Health Equity," the scientific program was assembled by a multisite planning committee with input from representatives of informal local host Kaiser Permanente Southern California. Objectives of the annual conference are to showcase scientific findings from HCSRN projects and to spur collaboration on research initiatives that improve health and health care for individuals and populations. To those ends, the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory sponsored a preconference workshop on the essentials of embedded pragmatic clinical trials, and more than a dozen scientific interest groups and active research project teams held ancillary sessions throughout the conference. This welcome opportunity for network members to meet in-person followed a 2-year hiatus necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which HCSRN conference proceedings were conducted through virtual and written communication platforms.