Research and Data Analysis Core (RDAC)

PROJECT SUMMARY – RESEARCH DATA AND ANALYSIS CORE The Boston Health Equity & community-Aligned Learning Health System (Boston HEALHS) Center integrates the research infrastructures of Boston Medical Center Health System and Boston University (BU) to form a highly innovative Research Data and Analysis Core (RDAC) that supports an LHS infrastructure designed to

address health inequities and serve as an experiential training laboratory for LHS Scientists. The overarching goal of the Boston-HEALHS RDAC is to provide scientific rigor for the Boston-HEALHS program in its conduct, implementation and dissemination of PCOR/CER. The RDAC will link experts in community

engagement, informatics, health services research, causal inference, comparative effectiveness/patient centered outcomes research, implementation science, equity, and research ethics together to achieve this goal. A fundamental tenet of the LHS approach is the combination of scientific rigor with pragmatic integration

of research within usual care processes. The RDAC Core will be responsible for maintaining scientific rigor for the Boston-HEALHS program, while working with the Administrative Core (Admin Core) to ensure relevance and impact of embedded research, and the Research Education Core (REC) to provide experiential learning

opportunities. Specifically, RDAC will develop and apply state-of-the-art methods and data for community- engaged participatory research, patient centered outcomes research, and embedded comparative effectiveness, and will support the design and execution of LHS scientists’ (as well as other investigators

across the system) research projects, coordinating and consulting with the Admin Core Committees to ensure continuous stakeholder input. Additionally, RDAC will innovate equitable implementation of evidence-informed practices and dissemination of LHS findings. We will expand our current systems of LHS knowledge

documentation by expanding our internal catalog of health systems learning to locally organize and disseminate LHS learning. We leverage our existing methods expertise in Community Engaged Research within the RDAC, strengthening links between methodologists, patients, community organizations, and researchers, in order to tackle local LHS priorities and drive positive change towards reducing health

disparities.