Collaboration is central to CHERP’s success.

CHERP is one of 15 VA HSR&D Centers of Excellence.  The center is a unique collaboration between the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System (VAPHS) and its academic affiliate the University of Pittsburgh (PITT), and the Philadelphia VA Medical Center (PVAMC) and the University of Pennsylvania (PENN). 

Below please find information about and links to CHERP’s collaborative partners.  The list is intended to be broad and represents CHERP’s equity and health services research, training, and dissemination activities.

Equity Research

Federal Collaboration on Health Disparities Research (FCHDR)

CHERP represents the VA in The Federal Collaboration on Health Disparities Research (FCHDR).  This working group of researchers and policy makers represents a groundbreaking collaboration of federal partners working to find new or improved solutions to eliminate health disparities through research that can influence practice and policy.

Center for Minority Health
The mission of the Center for Minority Health (CMH) is to improve the health and well being of racial and ethnic minority populations and to work toward the elimination of health disparities. CMH engages the University of Pittsburgh Schools of Health Sciences, including students of the Graduate School of Public Health, in a collaborative learning process designed to enhance the cultural competence of academic scholars and students. CMH further engages the community as trusted partners and participants in public health research and translates scientific research findings into health promotion and disease prevention interventions at the local, regional, and national levels.

Center for Population Health and Health Disparities
The Center for Population Health and Health Disparities (CPHHD) at the University of Pennsylvania focuses on research to address significant knowledge gaps about factors that predict prostate cancer outcomes, and in particular the causes of disparity in prostate cancer outcomes between men of African and Caucasian descent. The mission of the multidisciplinary center is to study the complex interaction of biological, clinical, behavioral, and environmental factors predictive of outcomes following a prostate cancer diagnosis; evaluate how these factors explain disparities in prostate cancer outcomes by ethnicity; and disseminate this information to at-risk populations and the public health community.

PENN-Cheney EXPORT center 
EXPORT stands for Excellence in Partnerships for Community Outreach, Research on Health Disparities and Training. Using obesity as its central theme, the overall goal of the EXPORT center is to increase the awareness of obesity-related health issues for African Americans and Latinos both in community organizations and among individuals, as well as to develop novel policies and programs to help reduce the impact of this problem. The EXPORT center is one of 15 centers in the United States and is funded by the NIH National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities.

Center of Excellence for Diversity Health Education and Research
The Center operates as an integral part of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and its Health System, and as such it aims to collaborate extensively with all units of the University that share its mission and goals. The center's overall goal is to establish, facilitate, conduct and evaluate programs and projects that will enhance the health of underrepresented minorities, particularly African Americans and Hispanics. The Center's activities and programs focus on training and educating minority physicians for faculty positions in Schools of Medicine and for leadership positions in health care policy and administration and enhancing research on minority health issues.

Health Services Research

Center for Public Health Initiatives
This multidisciplinary center seeks to harness the many public health resources of the University of Pennsylvania, including the University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Public Health Program, toward innovation and leadership in meeting large and looming public-health challenges

QRC
The Qualitative Research Core (QRC) are qualitative experts from the Center for Research on Health Care at the University of Pittsburgh and the CHERP. The mission of the QRC is to provide qualitative methodological and technical support services to investigators engaged in health research, with a focus on accountability, reliability, and excellence.

Center for Health Incentives

The mission of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics Center for Health Incentives (LDI CHI) is to facilitate research that makes significant contributions to reducing the disease burden from major public health problems such as tobacco cessation, obesity, and medication non-adherence for cardiovascular and other diseases through better understanding of how to design and apply incentives and other behavioral economic approaches to improving health.

RAND Pittsburgh
The RAND-University of Pittsburgh Health Institute (RUPHI) is a formal collaboration between RAND Health, a division of the RAND Corporation, and the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences. RUPHI’s primary goal is to build a collaborative, interdisciplinary health services research enterprise focused on addressing important local and national health care problems.

VISN4 MIRECC
MIRECC (Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Centers) is a national VA research program focused on mental health care.  The VISN4 MIRECC focuses specifically on comorbid general medical, mental health, and/or substance use disorders. VISN4 is the VA-defined geographic region covering CHERP’s locations in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

VAPHS Human Engineering Research Laboratories (HERL)
The Human Engineering Research Laboratories seeks to continuously improve the mobility and function of people with disabilities through advanced engineering in clinical research and medical rehabilitation.

VAPHS GRECC
The Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System facilitates research to investigate barriers to care in the elderly in an effort to determine why therapies that are known to be effective are not uniformly applied.

PVAMC PADRECC
One of six Parkinson's Disease, Research, Education and Clinical Centers (PADRECCs)  established by the VA, the PVAMC PADRECC provides state-of-the-art clinical care, ground-breaking research, and national education and outreach on Parkinson’s Disease. 

Training Programs

VA HSR&D Fellowship at VAPHS or PVAMC
CHERP supports two post-doctoral training positions for qualified individuals who wish to develop and enhance skills in health services research. Prior research on medical topics is not required.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program
The Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania trains leading physician graduates of US residency training programs who have a strong commitment to improving healthcare in community settings. Penn Clinical Scholars will become highly capable health services researchers, both able to develop research that is highly relevant to the broader community and to translate research findings into action.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program
The Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania aims to develop leaders who will produce significant scholarship, design interventions, and build the infrastructure and prestige of a new field focused on the multiple determinants of health.

SUMR Program
The Summer Undergraduate Minority Research Program at the University of Pennsylvania is a summer program for rising undergraduate sophomores, juniors and seniors from underrepresented minority groups, or anyone interested in exploring the field of health services research. The SUMR program provides students with an opportunity to receive a stipend to conduct health services research on a topic of their choice, under the guidance of Penn faculty.

PENN’s Master of Science in Health Policy Research Program
The Masters of Science Program in Health Policy Research prepares graduates for health services research and health policy research careers in academic, government, community, and industry settings.

PENN’s Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology
The Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology (MSCE) degree program provides comprehensive clinical research training. The goal of the program is to train individuals for successful careers as independent investigators. This program is directed by the faculty of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

PENN’s Master of Public Health
The University of Pennsylvania MPH program prepares individuals with training and experience in diverse fields to apply the public health paradigm as an essential component of their careers.  Students will acquire the competencies and skills to enhance the health of human populations locally, nationally and around the world and assure the conditions for healthy living.

Dissemination

Pennsylvania Department of Health Office of Health Equity
The Office of Health Equity was created in April 2006 at the direction of Governor Rendell to provide strategic oversight, direction and coordination of activities related to eliminating health disparities in Pennsylvania. The Office of Health Equity directs research objectives, works to improve data gathering, and use this data to provide evidence-based interventions.

VA CIDER
The Center for Information Dissemination and Education Resources (CIDER) is a VA Health Services Research and Development Service (HSR&D) national Resource Center with a mission to improve the health and care of veterans by disseminating important HSR&D findings and information to policy makers, managers, clinicians, and researchers throughout VA and the broader health care community.

Philadelphia Department of Health

College of Physicians of Philadelphia

The College advances the cause of health while upholding the ideals and heritage of medicine.  In this mission, the college engages families and communities in attending to their own health, serves physicians and other health care professionals, and provides information for health policy development.