At Urban Health Plan, our commitment to providing patient-centered, holistic, quality health care is part of a tradition that was started by our founder, Dr. Richard Izquierdo, more than 40 years ago. That tradition continues today by promoting excellence in everything that we do.
Interested in conducting research or developing processes that improve patient care? You’ve come to the right place. We have two unique programs: The Institute for the Advancement of Community Health and the Community-Based Research Center.
The Institute for the Advancement of Community Health (IACH) was established in 2005 to create a culture that encourages continuous improvement. The aim of the IACH is to improve the health status of underserved communities by developing and disseminating innovative best practices. Urban Health Plan uses evidence based quality improvement models; the Chronic Care Model or Care Model, Model for Improvement (PDSA: Plan, Do, Study Act) rapid improvement cycles, and the Learning Model to test and implement innovative ideas that improve patients’ health status, reduce health disparities and improve operational processes.
The IACH has developed a quality improvement training curriculum and provides team coaching to achieve breakthrough results. Performance improvement teams have been implemented for both clinical and non-clinical topics including but not limited to asthma, depression, diabetes, HIV, cancer screening, family planning, pediatric preventive care, childhood obesity prevention and treatment, and reducing wait time.
The Community-Based Research Center (CBRC), located within UHP’s main health center, El Nuevo San Juan, at 1065 Southern Boulevard, Bronx, New York, was established in 2012. It uses a collaborative approach to research that involves communities and their health care providers with academic institutions, foundations, pharmaceutical and device manufacturers in the research development process.
The CBRC’s mission is to promote community initiated research that reflects the needs of the community as expressed through the community’s interaction with their health care providers. The ultimate goal is to foster sustainable efforts at the community level that will accelerate the translation of research advances to underserved and at-risk populations by using community-based participatory research approaches (CBPR). Community-based participatory research is designed to promote collaborative research between researchers and members of their community through the joint design and implementation of research interventions targeting health disparities in the underserved population.
Clinical research conducted at the center may be funded through a variety of sources including government agencies such as the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), NIH (National Institute of Health), and CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), pharmaceutical companies, disease specific foundations, and philanthropic individuals and organizations.