Forrest, Christopher B.

AbstractIntroductionThe learning health system (LHS) aligns science, informatics, incentives, stakeholders, and culture for continuous improvement and innovation. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Patient‐Centered Outcomes Research Institute designed a K12 initiative to grow the number of LHS scientists. We describe approaches developed by 11 funded centers of excellence (COEs) to promote partnerships between scholars and health system leaders and to provide mentored research training.MethodsSince 2018, the COEs have enlisted faculty, secured institutional resources, partnered with health systems, developed and implemented curricula, recruited scholars, and provided mentored training. Program directors for each COE provided descriptive data on program context, scholar characteristics, stakeholder engagement, scholar experiences with health system partnerships, roles following program completion, and key training challenges.ResultsTo date, the 11 COEs have partnered with health systems to train 110 scholars. Nine (82%) programs partner with a Veterans Affairs health system and 9 (82%) partner with safety net providers. Clinically trained scholars (n = 87; 79%) include 70 physicians and 17 scholars in other clinical disciplines. Non‐clinicians (n = 29; 26%) represent diverse fields, dominated by population health sciences. Stakeholder engagement helps scholars understand health system and patient/family needs and priorities, enabling opportunities to conduct embedded research, improve outcomes, and grow skills in translating research methods and findings into practice. Challenges include supporting scholars through roadblocks that threaten to derail projects during their limited program time, ranging from delays in access to data to COVID‐19‐related impediments and shifts in organizational priorities.ConclusionsFour years into this novel training program, there is evidence of scholars' accomplishments, both in traditional academic terms and in terms of moving along career trajectories that hold the potential to lead and accelerate transformational health system change. Future LHS training efforts should focus on sustainability, including organizational support for scholar activities.

OBJECTIVES: ImproveCareNow (ICN) is the largest pediatric learning health system in the nation and started as a quality improvement collaborative. To test the feasibility and validity of using ICN data for clinical research, we evaluated the effectiveness of anti-tumor necrosis factor-α (anti-TNFα) agents in the management of pediatric Crohn disease (CD). METHODS: Data were collected in 35 pediatric gastroenterology practices (April 2007 to March 2012) and analyzed as a sequence of nonrandomized trials. Patients who had moderate to severe CD were classified as initiators or non-initiators of anti-TNFα therapy. Among 4130 patients who had pediatric CD, 603 were new users and 1211 were receiving anti-TNFα therapy on entry into ICN. RESULTS: During a 26-week follow-up period, rate ratios obtained from Cox proportional hazards models, adjusting for patient and disease characteristics and concurrent medications, were 1.53 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.20–1.96) for clinical remission and 1.74 (95% CI, 1.33–2.29) for corticosteroid-free remission. The rate ratio for corticosteroid-free remission was comparable to the estimate produced by the adult SONIC study, which was a randomized controlled trial on the efficacy of anti-TNFα therapy. The number needed to treat was 5.2 (95% CI, 3.4–11.1) for clinical remission and 5.0 (95% CI, 3.4–10.0) for corticosteroid-free remission. CONCLUSIONS: In routine pediatric gastroenterology practice settings, anti-TNFα therapy was effective at achieving clinical and corticosteroid-free remission for patients who had Crohn disease. Using data from the ICN learning health system for the purpose of observational research is feasible and produces valuable new knowledge.