About WREN
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Mission
The mission of the Wisconsin Research and Education Network (WREN) is to improve health outcomes for the people of Wisconsin through education, and through promoting and conducting primary care research in partnership with primary care clinicians and the communities they serve.
Size and Scope
Founded in 1987, WREN is one of the oldest and most respected practice-based research networks in the United States. WREN's membership comprises:
- More than 130 clinicians
- More than 20 healthcare organizations
- 37 communities
WREN members are distributed across Wisconsin in an array similar to the distribution of the state's population.
Members include individual clinicians and researchers from across the state, and all clinicians who practice at WREN full-support clinics. By supporting some clinics as full-support clinics, WREN has a pool of sites that are prepared to conduct ongoing research and quality improvement (QI) studies. Currently, WREN has full support relationships with clinics in Tomah, Dubuque, Mauston, Osceola and Milwaukee.
Annual Report
Future Directions
WREN has secured funding through the UW School of Medicine and Public Health (UW SMPH) Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) federal grant. This will allow WREN to support translational research projects at participating practices.
Dissemination of translational research results can then be blended into quality enhancement projects, resulting in improved health care processes and practices. These process improvements, in turn, can result in improved patient safety, patient satisfaction and health outcomes.
WREN is actively seeking new relationships with investigators to develop future projects. WREN staff can help to identify research methods that work in a busy practice, implement projects, analyze results, write manuscripts and disseminate results.
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