REACH External Partners

The American Board of Family Medicine, Inc. (ABFM) has partnered with UK's CCTS to advance the science of dissemination and implementation on a national scale through development of ABFM certification and maintenance of certification activities using Web-based clinical simulations to translate best practices. The ABFM certifies almost 74,000 U.S. family physicians through knowledge-based and practice-based maintenance of certification activities at least every seven years.

Kentucky Academy of Family Physicians and the Kentucky Primary Care Association member physicians and executive leadership have been active in the Kentucky Ambulatory Network (KAN) since its inception, a partnership that has now expanded to include UK's CCTS. Both organizations have been essential partners, guiding and linking KAN's research goals with federally qualified health centers and the disadvantaged patients they serve, and both are participating in the current REACH translational study, Enabling Quality Improvement in Practice for Diabetes Management, to develop and evaluate a REACH-modified version of the Health Resources and Services Administration Health Disparities Collaborative for diabetes management in small rural practices.

Kentucky Department for Public Health, is represented on the REACH Operations Group and has been involved with REACH initiatives in substantive ways. These have included providing data for CCTS planning processes, connecting university researchers with local health departments, identifying funding for health liaisons and study coordinators at the five Centers for Rural Health, co-sponsoring the inaugural meeting of directors of local health departments to establish the Kentucky Public Health Research Network, and participating in planning for the Regional IRB Consortium (see Bioethics and Regulatory Support).

Kentucky Institute of Medicine™ (KIOM) was founded in 2004 by then-director of the UK Office of Health Research and Development, Dr. Emery Wilson, to bring together health care professionals, community leaders, and local and state government officials to aid in the development of public policy on health care and health services delivery and finance. KIOM's groundbreaking 2007 study, The Health of Kentucky: A County Assessment, established a novel means to assess community health using 25 parameters in the areas of behavioral and social factors, demographics, health access, health outcomes and cancer death rates to rank Kentucky's 120 counties.

Kentucky Medical Association (KMA) members share a mission of commitment to the profession and service to the citizens of Kentucky. KMA is working with CCTS on dissemination of new evidence produced by high-quality research and bidirectional communications between practicing physicians and CCTS.

Kentucky Office of Rural Health has been housed at the UK Center for Excellence in Rural Health at Hazard, Kentucky since 1990 and now reports to the director of the UK Office of Health Research and Development. This innovative partnership between state government and the University of Kentucky will be expanded as part of the development of the four new Centers for Rural Health (CsRH). Each new CRH will host a satellite office of this agency staffed by a Rural Health agent to promote access to health care, health education and healthy behaviors.

West Virginia Academy of Family Physicians (WVAFP). With UK CCTS support, planning began in Summer 2008 to replicate and expand the partnership between the Kentucky Academy of Family Physicians and the Kentucky Ambulatory Network in West Virginia, working with the WVAFP and the West Virginia Research Network, a primary care practice-based research network administered by West Virginia University.