The iPATH Project Hopes to Advance FQHCs’ Type 2 Diabetes Care
The iPATH Project Hopes to Advance FQHCs’ Type 2 Diabetes Care
Significant racial and socioeconomic disparities persist in the quality of care and safety for the more than 37 million Americans who have type 2 diabetes. SHP’s Sara Singer is working to improve equity-based diabetes care in federally funded health-care centers.
Research by Sara Singer, PhD, MBA, to improve diabetes care in federally funded community health centers was highlighted in the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory newsletter, which ran a Q&A with the professor of health policy about her iPATH trial.
Singer is the principal investigator for Implementing Scalable, Patient-Centered Team-Based Care for Adults With Type 2 Diabetes and Health Disparities (iPATH), a 5-year R01 study funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD). A network of researchers from Stanford, Harvard, The Ohio State University and Impactivo, LLC, is identifying, testing and disseminating promising care delivery innovations in Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in California, Massachusetts, Ohio and Puerto Rico.
Some 37.3 million Americans have type 2 diabetes and still face racial and socioeconomic disparities when it comes to the quality of care and patient safety. FQHCs serve one in seven U.S. racial and ethnic minorities and shoulder a higher prevalence of diabetes. The iPATH project will refine and implement an approach to practice transformation originally conceived to support FQHCs’ pursuit of National Committee for Quality Assurance recognition as patient-centered medical homes.
“We hope that the lessons learned from our multiple case comparison study and iPATH practice transformation intervention will provide evidence for improving diabetes care in FQHCs and reducing health disparities across the nation and help FQHCs achieve goals that enable them to receive incentive pay,” Singer said.
