PATIENTS Program: Building Community Research Partnerships

Proem

I specialize in patient/ caregiver/ clinician/ community partnerships and the intersection between research, technology, and the health journey. This sentence describes the nut of what Health Hats offers. The key word is partnerships. My antennae quiver when I sense a mature, evolving community-research partnership. So, I readily agreed when my friends and colleagues, Janice Tufte and Sneha Dave, invited me to attend the SHining the SpOtlight Wide (SHOW) Conference. The PATIENTS Program sponsored the SHOW Conference. The PATIENTS Program envisions a world in which patients and stakeholders are heard, inspired, and empowered to co-develop patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR).

The PATIENTS Program is an interdisciplinary research team of community partners and researchers housed at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy that works to change the way we think about research by creating a path for health equity in West Baltimore. Our guest, Rodney Elliott, and his production partner, Eric Kettering, reached out to me after the virtual conference. They host a podcast, The Bridge: Your Health Your Voice, at the PATIENTS Program. We decided to interview each other for our respective podcasts. Here’s the link to Rodney and Eric’s version. Stay tuned for mine. Same raw footage, very different output.