Collaborative Initiatives and Networks (CoIN)

The mission of CoIN is to promote collaborative work with other groups across campus. To that end, GIM CoIN encompasses several initiatives:

Delivery Redesign for Innovation, Value, and Equity (DRIVE)

The mission of DRIVE is to accelerate innovation, value, and equity through safety-net delivery redesign that is grounded in evaluation, implementation, and education. It is a key collaboration with our partners at Parkland Health.

Key aspects of evaluation and implementation can support safety-net delivery redesign. These include:

• Retrospective analysis, which can drive insight to inform future redesign efforts
• Prospective implementation, which can drive insight about redesign effectiveness
• Design methods, which can drive insight about redesign success or failure.

Clinical Research, Evaluation, and Data Office (CREDO)

The mission of CREDO is to serve as an institutional resource at UT Southwestern that supports scholars in leveraging data resources into impactful clinical research.

The Office’s goals are to:

• Curate and build a data asset collection for use by clinical researchers,
• Develop support data resources to support data use,
• Serve as unified hub for information and resources related to research and evaluation

The motivation for CREDO is that multiple data types enable impactful clinical research. These include electronic health record (EHR), claims, population sample, program or organization, and area-level datasets – all of which have potential for different research uses, such as observational analyses, clinical trials (recruitment, safety surveillance), and preliminary data estimates or analyses.

However, available data ≠ usable data. Use also requires other processes, including mapping, management, standardization, detailing, and curation. These are difficult processes to achieve or maintain at the level of individual scholar or scholarly unit. Instead, the opportunity and need exists at the institutional level in units such as CREDO.

The CREDO team includes faculty leads (MD/DO, PhD) along with data and operational staff. The team works closely with data science and methods experts across campus.

Health Systems Evaluation and Action Team (HEAT)

The mission of the UT Southwestern Health Systems Evaluation and Action Team (HEAT) is to support and collaborate with people and groups to design, evaluate, and implement care delivery innovations across the health system. This perspective of translational scholarship and application would align with the institutional clinical and researcher missions, acknowledging health systems work that can be done in pursuit of complementary yet distinct goals: to produce generalizable insight and to produce more actionable change.

The nexus between operations and research represents opportunities for health system innovation: one in which science is used to address health care delivery in order to integrate local with external evidence and put knowledge into practice. These emphases are consistent with the goals and practices of learning health systems.

The structure and work conducted through HEAT aligns with Learning Health System (LHS) competencies and capacities. Guided by an LHS framework, science can be used to address care delivery in several ways.

1. Observational methods can be used to identify and characterize the need for targeted interventions and glean insights about prior or existing initiatives.
2. Interventions can be prospectively tested for effectiveness.
3. User-centered design can be used to create or modify interventions to increase stakeholder engagement and uptake.

Together, these methods can inform decisions to scale, maintain, adapt, or discontinue care delivery processes or programs. They also represent a way to integrate local experience with external evidence and put knowledge into practice.

Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design (BERD)

BERD provides complimentary consultation and research support for early-career clinical scholars who are developing research projects and working toward independent funding. A common challenge for investigators early in their research careers is obtaining access to the methodological and analytic expertise needed to advance promising research ideas. BERD helps bridge this gap by providing expertise in biostatistics, epidemiology, research design, and analytic methods during the early stages of project and career development.

Through the CTSA Program, BERD supports investigators with study design, statistical analysis planning, pilot and preliminary data analyses, sample size and power calculations, grant development, and interpretation of research findings. Our goal is to help investigators build the foundation needed to compete successfully for pilot funding, career development awards, and future research opportunities.

BERD works collaboratively with investigators to identify the most appropriate level of support for each project and to connect scholars with additional institutional resources when ongoing or specialized collaboration is needed.