Basic science research occurs in the lab. At the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, the work of Dr. Jim Bailey and his team occurs at the other end of the research spectrum—in the community.
Dr. Bailey, the Robert S. Pearce Endowed Chair in Internal Medicine, serves as the principal investigator for the Tennessee Heart Health Network, a statewide initiative to test interventions to improve the cardiovascular health of Tennesseans.
In 2021, UTHSC and Dr. Bailey received a $4.5 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to build a network of primary care providers across the state and arm them with effective, patient-centered methods to encourage better management of blood pressure and smoking cessation, two primary risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The goal is to reduce strokes and heart attacks in the state that ranks third in the United States in cardiovascular events, sixth in deaths from cardiovascular disease and fifth in deaths from stroke. Tennessee is one of only four states in the country chosen by AHRQ to receive this grant
Dr. Bailey, also the executive director for the Tennessee Population Health Consortium and the director for the UTHSC Center for Health Systems Improvement, says this “real world” research resides at the intersection of implementation science and population health. “What we’re really doing through this work is testing the impact of a major statewide service delivery program of UTHSC,” he explains. “We’re working to replicate evidence from university-based efficacy trials in large community-based effectiveness trials, and then we roll out proven approaches for improving care through even larger implementation and dissemination initiatives like the Tennessee Heart Health Network, where we see if we can impact the population as a whole.”
Read more at our UTHSC news site.