September 12, 2025
OCHIN members are committed to delivering high-quality care and improving health outcomes in their communities through effective use of health IT and evidence-based practices. To support this mission, OCHIN builds on a broad scientific evidence base that reflects the communities our members serve and is relevant to community health organizations.
Our commitment to evidence-based care is strengthened through collaborative research efforts with member organizations. Over the past 20 years, OCHIN has developed a broad research portfolio that informs care strategies and supports community health.
Central to this work is the OCHIN-led ADVANCE Clinical Research Network. As one of eight members In the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network, or PCORnet, ADVANCE is the nation’s largest research network focused on community-based primary care. It includes 301 health systems serving 7.9 million patients across 42 states.
With this reach, ADVANCE provides a strong foundation for innovative clinical research aimed at improving care delivery and patient outcomes in community health organizations.
Understanding clinical trials
To appreciate the impact of ADVANCE, it’s helpful to understand the role of clinical trials. These large, complex studies test the effects of new interventions—such as medications, devices or tools—and may involve clinics, clinicians, or patients as participants.
Traditional clinical research is often conducted in highly controlled environments. While this helps researchers isolate cause-and-effect relationships, it doesn’t always reflect the realities of everyday patient care. As a result, findings may not be fully applicable to community health settings.
To address this gap, researchers conduct pragmatic clinical trials—studies designed to take place in real-world settings, including OCHIN member clinics. These trials consider both the effectiveness of an intervention and the broader systems and human factors that influence care.
This approach yields findings that are more relevant and useful to patients, providers and health systems. To date, OCHIN researchers have collaborated with more than 100 member organizations on 51 clinical research studies, including 18 pragmatic trials.
Benefits for community health organizations
Clinical research within community-based care organizations generates evidence that clinicians, patients, policymakers and community health organizations can use to improve health outcomes. It produces practical tools and insights that support patient-centered care and address pressing questions, such as:
- Can a clinical decision support tool help tailor management strategies for people at high risk of heart disease?
- Do remote, virtual interventions improve mental health outcomes for adolescents?
- What are the most effective ways to support social needs screening and referrals in primary care?
Participating in clinical research offers a range of benefits, including diversifying revenue streams, connecting patients with promising interventions, and helping retain staff through professionally rewarding opportunities. While participation may require additional effort or initial investment, centralized support through OCHIN and ADVANCE provides foundational capacity and shared learning that care organizations can build on.
How ADVANCE supports participation across the OCHIN network
Despite its value, many community health organizations face barriers to participating in clinical research, such as limited staffing, space, infrastructure or funding. These challenges can prevent patients and providers from engaging in studies through their local health centers or clinics.
To overcome these barriers, OCHIN has built centralized data and engagement infrastructure through ADVANCE that connects health centers and patients with research opportunities tailored to their care settings and community contexts.
For example:
- BP-HOME, a PCORnet-wide clinical trial, partnered with OCHIN and ADVANCE to include over 500 health center patients in testing the comparative effectiveness of home blood pressure monitoring devices.
- DEDICATE, a pragmatic trial currently underway, uses ADVANCE infrastructure to test strategies like practice coaching and audit-and- feedback to support health centers’ use of electronic health record-based care management tools.
Looking ahead
In early 2025, ADVANCE and OCHIN were awarded a fourth phase of funding from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Over the next four years, OCHIN will continue working with members across the collaborative to identify and scale pragmatic, low-burden approaches that support health center and patient participation in high-value clinical research.
To learn more about ADVANCE or how to participate in clinical research with OCHIN, contact the ADVANCE team at advance@ochin.org.
Visit ADVANCEcollaborative.org for additional information.
The research reported in this work was powered by PCORnet®. PCORnet has been developed with funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute® (PCORI®) and conducted with the Accelerating Data Value Across a National Community Health Center Network (ADVANCE) Clinical Research Network (CRN). ADVANCE is a Clinical Research Network in PCORnet® led by OCHIN in partnership with Health Choice Network, Fenway Health, University of Washington, and Oregon Health & Science University. ADVANCE’s participation in PCORnet® is funded through the PCORI Award RI-OCHIN-01-MC.
