Creating a Centralized Infrastructure to Facilitate Medical Education Research.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education Research
• Family Medicine Scholarship
• Academic Medicine

Background:

• Family medicine faces challenges in research capacity and scholarly output.
• Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) mandates increased scholarly requirements for residency programs.
• The Council of Academic Family Medicine Educational Research Alliance (CERA) was established to address these needs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the CERA model for enhancing scholarly productivity in family medicine.
• To highlight CERA's role in overcoming barriers to research for faculty and residency programs.
• To showcase the impact of a collaborative research infrastructure.

Main Methods:

• CERA utilizes an omnibus survey approach for family medicine educational leaders.
• Proposals are centrally collected, competitively selected, and undergo rigorous review.
• The process includes mentorship, IRB clearance, pilot testing, and centralized data collection.

Main Results:

• Over 115 research teams have utilized CERA surveys.
• Collaborative efforts have led to more than 75 scientific presentations.
• Over 55 peer-reviewed publications have resulted from CERA-supported projects.

Conclusions:

• CERA's infrastructure significantly reduces the time and energy costs of research.
• CERA effectively expands family medicine research by supporting teams with limited resources.
• The initiative democratizes scholarly production within the family medicine specialty.