National Collaboration on Public-Academic Partnerships
The Center supports a portfolio of Healthcare Delivery Science projects led by both scientific experts from the University of Southern California and operational leaders from LA County Department of Health Services. Building on our experience, we assembled and led a writing group from seven CTSA hubs and their health department partners for a “Synergy paper” sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.
The paper describes how academic-public health/healthcare system partnerships bring together researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and communities to reduce silos. Common themes included aligning activities of CTSA programs with the needs of hubs’ public partners, sharing resources, responding to real-time policy questions and training needs, promoting best practices, advancing community-engaged research, and using Dissemination & Implementation methods to narrow the knowledge-practice gap. Common barriers included competing priorities, differing timelines, bureaucratic hurdles, and unstable funding.
We now co-lead with UCSF a national Discussion Forum on partnerships with public health/health care departments. More than sixteen organizations have attended our virtual monthly meetings. We are currently developing a manuscript on the partnerships’ changes during the COVID pandemic, as well as how they were leveraged to respond to the pandemic locally and regionally.
Contact us about participating: hds@usc.edu