Health equity can be augmented by engaging the Primary Care Safety Net.

With funding from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute  (NHLBI) and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), Morehouse School of Medicine’s (MSM’s) National Center for Primary Care (NCPC) and OCHIN formed the Network for Community-engaged Primary Care Research (NCPCR) to leverage community-engaged research in primary care settings to address health inequities. MSM launched the Coalition to Advance COVID-19 Equity (CACE) to engage the primary care safety net workforce and community members in narrowing current and longstanding health inequities. Through its administrative and methodological cores, CACE will engage clinical and community partners to launch a disseminate materials on COVID-19 prevention and treatment as well as other chronic disease prevention and management materials. It will also engage in primary and secondary data analysis to identify successful equity focused primary care models and launch a randomized control trial to test practice level interventions identified through data analysis.

Evaluation of dissemination and engagement activities will enhance the intereventions and their replicability.

NORC  serves as an independent evaluator for CACE. NORC has led the development of the NCPCR CACE evaluation plan and logic model and continue to engage in evaluation activities throughout the project. This includes collaborating with evaluators at OCHIN and working with the Community Engagement Technical Assistance Center.