Resources

AHRQ has set a long-term goal of understanding whether fostering relationships between clinical practices and community organizations is an effective way to enhance the delivery of clinical preventive services. This Clinical Community Relationships Measures Atlas provides a list of existing measures for assessing the structures, processes, and outcomes associated with clinical-community relationships for prevention. The measures are organized according to a framework that includes the relationships between clinicians, patients, and community resources.

The Clinical-Community Relationships Evaluation Roadmap is a resource for future research and evaluation of effective clinical-community resource relationships. The Roadmap will be of use to funders, researchers, and program evaluators interested in primary care. The resource's investigators pose priority questions and recommendations for advancing research and developing clinical-community resource measures, based on an environmental scan of measures, a targeted literature review of research, an assessment of evidence gaps, and input from an expert panel. While the Roadmap specifically addresses clinical-community resource relationships for selected clinical preventive services, the principles and questions offered may also apply to other clinical and non-clinical services. Thus, the Roadmap also may prove applicable to those interested in effective relationships and coordination between clinics and community organizations such as schools or providers of social services.

This supplement to the Clinical Community Relationships Measures Atlas suggests 52 potential measures that could be developed to fill the gaps in existing measurements. The supplement also proposes a core set of 13 measures culled from both the existing measures in the Atlas and the 52 potential measures that have been judged to represent the essential aspects of clinical community relationships for prevention. These measures are suggested for further testing and development with the ultimate aim of increasing the delivery of appropriate clinical preventive services.