The mission of the Health Policy Research Consortium (HPRC) is to promote policy and behavioral outcomes that will improve the quality of health care in Region III (DC, MD, VA, DE, WV, and PA) in general and in Prince George’s County, Maryland in particular. We are funded by a U54 grant through the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) and our mission is to implement a plan and process with health policy outcomes that will change the reality of health care disparities and other imbalances as we know them today.
Our purpose is to close the gap between policy and science in driving down health disparities by assessing and addressing how current and proposed policies influence and aid residents, communities and various population groups in making healthy behavioral choices that support the available science known to produce healthy outcomes.
Our approach is trans-disciplinary, transformative and catalytic; spanning medical, political, environmental, socioeconomic and socio-cultural silos. Our role is to act as a research advocate for policies, programs and practices that amplify the implementation of good science and good policy.
We seek to do that through the Implementation and/or analysis of local, state, or national policies not specifically related to health that increase or reduce health disparities within a region, including but not limited to those related to zoning or housing, public education, immigration, criminal justice, workplace policies in the public or private sector that impact health within a region as well as initiatives stemming from community-based participatory policy research that translate into local, state, or regional policy changes.
Included among our deliverables will be important research, case studies, innovative health policy tools, statistically based interactive technologies, policy repositories and intellectual web based policy products designed in part to help bridge the gaps between policymakers and community members by developing an evidence-based framework for engagement in the health policy process.
Our goal to develop a transportable standard of policy interventions that can be similarly applied to like regions across the US that in parallel also become intellectual assets, conceptual studies, abstracts and academic properties for presentation and serve as a basis for amending or generating national, state and local health policy legislation.