Who We Are
The OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network is a collaboration among researchers, clinicians and patients in Florida, Georgia and Alabama to create an enduring infrastructure for a wide range of health research, including pragmatic clinical trials, comparative effectiveness research, implementation science studies, observational research, and cohort discovery. Network partners include the University of Florida, Florida State University, the University of Miami, the University of South Florida, Emory University in Atlanta, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, along with the six universities’ affiliated health systems and practices. Other partners include AdventHealth (Orlando), Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, Tampa General Hospital, Bond Community Health (Tallahassee), Community Health IT (Kennedy Space Center), Nicklaus Children’s Hospital (Miami), Capital Health Plan (Tallahassee), Bendcare (Boca Raton, Florida) and the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees the Florida Medicaid Program.
OneFlorida+ partners are committed to conducting stakeholder-engaged research in partnership with health systems, clinicians, patients, payers, policymakers and communities. Our partners strive for efficiency, offering multiple approaches and tools to facilitate healthcare research for today’s complex health issues. OneFlorida+ network partners also ensure that lessons from research conducted in the region’s diverse settings are systematically captured and translated back into improved health, health care and health policy for residents throughout the southeastern United States.
Consortium Partners
What We Do
The OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network unites researchers, clinicians, patients and stakeholders to address some of the nation’s biggest health challenges and serve as a resource for the region in improving health, health care and health policy. Together, OneFlorida partners provide health care to more than 16 million people throughout Florida and in Atlanta, Georgia and Birmingham Alabama. To support research aimed at addressing the South’s most pressing health care needs, OneFlorida’s research infrastructure allows investigators to:
- Identify cohorts and conduct observational research using aggregate and limited patient-level health data from diverse partners across the Southeast.
- Identify and intervene with patients at the point of care.
- Conduct pragmatic clinical trials and other interventional studies, including implementation science and comparative effectiveness research, in eligible, research-ready clinics.
THE DATA TRUST
The OneFlorida+ Data Trust’s regional repository of healthcare data is regularly updated with the inclusion of new partners and data refreshes from existing partners. All data are cleaned, transformed, curated and contained in a centralized data warehouse, allowing streamlined inquiries and uniform results based on high-quality data. Legal agreements for data use and use of OneFlorida+’s centralized IRB have already been negotiated with all partners, reducing paperwork and administrative burden.
Scientists and clinicians across the Southeast rely on the OneFlorida+ Data Trust to support a variety of research activities, including hypothesis generation, cohort discovery, prep-to-research activities, participant enrollment, observational studies, research workflow (such as informed consent and eligibility determination), and study data collection.
THE NETWORK
The OneFlorida+ Practice-Based Research Network (PBRN) allows researchers to conduct pragmatic clinical trials and other interventional studies in the network’s research-ready clinics with patients who have already consented to participate in clinical studies. Research is conducted in real-world settings to promote the implementation of evidence-based health-care practices into patient care.
The OneFlorida PBRN is one of 178 national PBRNs registered with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The AHRQ’s Integrated Clinical Research Program manages the networks and coordinates a variety of research supports designed to create an efficient and streamlined process for practice and patient recruitment, data collection and assessment of patient outcomes.
Intervention sites include academic health care centers and affiliated clinics, private health systems and clinics, public health care systems and clinics, community health centers, and physician-owned practices.
Engagement
Engaging citizen scientists and other stakeholders in health research can provide the study team with valuable insights and different perspectives that increase the usefulness, usability and accessibility of study findings. Our researchers routinely confer with a variety of stakeholders to strengthen our resources and infrastructure and improve health research.
COMMUNITY SCIENTISTS: Community members with an interest in health research may apply to join the OneFlorida+ Citizen Scientist program. After undergoing a brief training to familiarize them with health research, citizen scientists work alongside scientists as consultants and collaborators, offering lay perspectives and insights on everything from the study aims to participant recruiting to dissemination of the study findings.
HEALTH SYSTEM LEADERS: We engage CEOs, chief operating officers, chief medical officers and other health system leaders through annual individual in-person meetings to leverage their expertise. We also provide ongoing support to them for transmission of electronic health record data to the OneFlorida+Data Trust and for submitting additional data elements to allow for more robust studies (e.g., additional lab data, Apgar scores).
CLINICIANS: We identify and work with recognized physician leaders in communities throughout the Southeast to help develop recruiting practices for study participation. Clinicians who participate in studies also have access to the OneFlorida+ Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Program, an important engagement tool that contributes to the sustainability of an intervention after research completion.
Governance
The network is governed by the OneFlorida+ Executive Committee, which adopted a partnership governance model and includes representatives from all partners. The committee oversees the development and utilization of the network’s infrastructure cores as well as research alliances created among network partners. The committee is co-chaired by Elizabeth Shenkman, Ph.D., co-director of the University of Florida Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UF CTSI), William Hogan, M.D., director of biomedical informatics for the UF CTSI, and Jeffrey Joyce, senior associate dean for research and graduate programs at Florida State University.
