Tactics for Institutional Advocacy to Increase Research Capacity in a Family Medicine Department

Family medicine as a specialty has steadily increased its research capacity. Specific approaches are needed to attain the following: 1) Advocate for increased funding for Departments of Family Medicine from institutional leadership. 2) Identify and promote promising practices for chairs to support and fund research participation within their departments and institutions. Having each assumed the chair position recently, the authors summarize the specific approaches taken to expand the research capacity in a midsized urban and a large research intensive urban public university family medicine department. They included: obtaining adequate support from the Dean and other institutional programs at the time of on-boarding, focusing on established research themes within the department, ensuring the recruited faculty had high likelihood of success via their track record and mentorship, and getting the buy-in from all faculty through sharing of vision and helping everyone establish their scholarly niche.