Pediatric Research in Office Settings at 25: A Quarter Century of Network Research Toward the Betterment of Children's Health

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Policy and Practice Change

As noted elsewhere,2, 3 the network's contributions have served to change the recommendations to practitioners on a variety of topics.

Key Lessons Learned

Over 25 years of existence, PROS has acquired a body of knowledge beyond that generated through our many studies. Along the way, major challenges have emerged; solutions have been generated, and several lessons for the future have been learned and incorporated into our network- and study-specific operations. Here, we discuss 4 key lessons learned.

New Horizons

IBM founder Thomas J. Watson famously noted that, “Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops.” PROS has taken this lesson to heart in its continuing search for heuristics with which to guide its work in coming years. Some of these new horizons spring from the new realities of pediatrics as it is practiced in the 21st century; others are from a critical examination of the logical next steps of previous work. Here are 3 particularly

Conclusions

PROS achievements are best appreciated as part of a broad PBRN movement—begun by a small group of family medicine pioneers and nurtured by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in its Practice-Based Research Network program.20 PROS has been a major participant in this effort, adding to the methodology of PBRN research and nurturing the growth of other PBRNs. Fully a quarter of a century has passed since Dr Haggerty's vision was first realized, the original concept equipped with only a

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Cited by (3)

  • Overcoming challenges in the changing environment of practice-based research

    2015, Annals of Family Medicine
    Citation Excerpt :

    Pediatric Research in Office Settings (PROS),1 the practice-based research network (PBRN) of the American Academy of Pediatrics, has been conducting studies for 28 years in all 50 states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Conducting studies in national, as opposed to regional, PBRNs2,3 presents logistic and methodologic challenges because study procedures need to be followed remotely. In addition, as communication technologies continue to change and health care settings adopt electronic health records, many techniques used traditionally for conducting research across varied primary care settings have become unwieldy and unwelcome.

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