Centers and Networks Overview

The Center for Healthy Families and Cultural Diversity

The Center for Healthy Families and Cultural Diversity (CHFCD) was established in the 1997-98 academic year, and is dedicated to leadership, advocacy, and excellence in promoting culturally-responsive, quality health care for diverse populations. It has evolved from a program focused primarily on multicultural education and training for health professionals, to an expanded and growing resource for technical assistance, consultation, and research/evaluation services. The CHFCD recognizes that persisting racial and ethnic health disparities are a major clinical, public health, and societal problem. Its approach to developing cultural and linguistic competency involves a systems perspective, a focus on quality improvement, community involvement, and collaboration with key stakeholders and constituency groups. The CHFCD exists to foster justice and equity in health care.

Rutgers Network of Affiliated Family Medicine Residencies

The Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, RUTGERS Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, operates the Rutgers Network of Affiliated Family Medicine Residencies in suburban, urban, and semi-rural locations across New Jersey. The Network offers high-quality educational programs for residents from eight member residencies that no one residency could produce by itself -- excellent workshops and conferences, support groups, and research and elective opportunities that richly complement the training and education offered at each of the eight individual residencies. The Department created this successful statewide network and has fostered its growth and development.

The goals of the Network are to provide a supportive network for family medicine residency education in the State of New Jersey, to share resources and ideas across residency programs, to develop and enhance new and existing educational offerings, to provide program quality assurance, to develop and implement collaborative research projects among interested network residencies, to foster faculty development, and to provide medical student sites.

New Jersey Primary Care Research Network

Since 2001, the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at RUTGERS Robert Wood Johnson Medical School has been developing and operating the New Jersey Primary Care Research Network, a practice-based research network of nearly 120 primary care practices, more than 300 physicians and approximately 750,000 patients. Participating practices are located in all 21 NJ counties in a variety of urban, suburban and semi-rural settings.

The network was initially developed in partnership with the New Jersey Academy of Family Physicians and the Departments of Family Medicine and Community Health at New Jersey Medical School and School of Osteopathic Medicine and led by Benjamin Crabtree, Ph.D. The mission of the Research Network, a collaborative partnership between primary care practices and a multidisciplinary team of researchers, is to improve the quality of health care through the generation of research findings that can inform and influence primary care practice and public policy.