The GROWBABY Research Network: A Framework for Advancing Health Equity Through Community Engaged Practice-Based...

Preventive health care, delivered through well child care visits, serves as a universal and primary entry point for promoting child wellbeing, yet children with lower socioeconomic status and children of color receive less consistent and lower quality preventive health care. Currently, limited research exists comparing models for delivering preventive care to children and their impact on longstanding racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequities.

Practice-based research networks can help to advance health equity by more rapidly studying and scaling innovative, local models of care to reduce racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequities in primary care and preventive care utilization. This paper outlines a framework of community engagement that can be utilized by practice-based research networks to advance health equity and details the application of the framework using the GROWBABY Research Network (GROup Wellness Visits for BABies and FamilY Research Network).

The GROWBABY Research Network launched in 2020, engaged clinical practices utilizing this unique model of group well childcare - CenteringParenting® - with the following goals: to promote collaboration among researchers, clinicians, patients, and community members; facilitate practice-based research; and increase the use of shared assessment measures and protocols. As a research collaborative, the GROWBABY Research Network connects clinical partners facing similar challenges and creates opportunities to draw upon the assets and strengths of the collective to identify solutions to the barriers to research participation.

Primary care, practice-based research networks like the GROWBABY Research Network that intentionally integrate community engagement principles and community-based participatory research methods can advance equitable health care systems and improve child wellbeing.