Services & Systems Research

Learn about Advancing the State of the Art in Community Benefit projects

The Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII) is a nationally recognized leader in transforming public health practice to advance health equity to create healthier communities. It is a collaborative of public health directors, officers, senior managers and staff from the 11 San Francisco Bay Area health departments and the California Department of Public Health.

At BARHII, lessons learned are shared and strategies and resources developed; committees focus on data, community engagement, built environment, social determinants of health, structural racism and building health departments’ capacity.

Learn about Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative projects

Founded in 1982, C/NET Solutions develops cancer registry software that provides quality data collection, and powerful, reliable, user-friendly abstracting and reporting. C/NET Solutions first distributed its cancer registry software to hospitals in California, then to over 800 facilities across the country through the American College of Surgeons. In 1992 C/NET Solutions launched C/NEXT, a network-ready software, and began selling it to hospitals and other facilities outside California. CNExT for Windows now serves over 350 cancer registries in over 25 states and provinces across North America.

Learn about C/Net Solutions projects

The California Environmental Health Tracking Program emphasizes the development of spatial analysis and visualization methods that enable state-of-the-art systems for predicting geographically related exposures to environmental hazards and relating those exposures to health indicators.

Learn about California Environmental Health Tracking Program projects

The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), the nation's largest state health survey, is a collaboration of PHI, the California Department of Public Health, the California Department of Health Care Services and the University of California at Los Angeles Center for Health Policy Research. CHIS data are a critical tool in developing programs and policies to fight health threats such as obesity.

Learn about California Health Interview Survey projects

California's current health workforce is composed of more than one million individuals. In order to supplement and replace the retiring professionals with California residents over the next 30 years, CHWA works to educate and develop more than one million new and upcoming healthcare professionals.

Learn about California Health Workforce Alliance projects

PHI assists the California Department of Public Health, Cancer Surveillance and Research Branch with the administration of the California Cancer Registry for California Regions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7/10. These regions comprise the Cancer Registry of Greater California (CRGC) and geographically cover the entire state except for Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area and Central Coast regions.  Registry operations include collecting, processing and compiling cancer data.  PHI also uses the data to support regional cancer surveillance and cancer control activities.

Learn about Cancer Registry of Greater California projects

Today’s public health challenges are complex and rapidly evolving, and call for an innovative approach to leadership development. The mission of the Center for Health Leadership and Practice (CHLP) is to advance health by increasing leaders' capacity to transcend boundaries, work collaboratively and transform their communities. Through the use of blended learning modalities, CHLP leads programs for teams, coalitions, initiatives and professional networks to advance leadership skills and reduce health inequities.

Learn about Center for Health Leadership and Practice projects

Clinical Trial Quest's mission is to expand access to clinical trial participation by empowering and encouraging discussions between patients and healthcare providers. We believe that by having more community healthcare providers and more diverse patient populations (minorities, women, elderly and socioeconomically disadvantaged patients) participating in clinical trials we can increase the speed of innovation, help the medical community better understand how medicines work in different populations, and both support and improve the quality of care in community healthcare settings.

To accomplish our goals we are developing an educational platform and portfolio of engagement tools. Our platform includes a proprietary database and user interface that will provide patients, caregivers and healthcare providers with accessible, scientifically rigorous and actionable information about clinical trials and standard of care treatments curated from a variety of sources to insure inclusion of the latest information about emerging treatments. Information will be customized to each user audience in a manner currently unavailable to patients, caregivers and healthcare providers.

Learn about Clinical Trial Quest projects

The Health in All Policies Task Force is a collaborative project between the Public Health Institute, the California Department of Public Health, and the California Strategic Growth Council. Health in All Policies is a collaborative approach to improving population health by incorporating health considerations into decision-making across sectors and policy areas. HiAP is an innovative response to increasingly siloed government structures, rising healthcare costs, growing inequities, and growing awareness of the impact of the social determinants of health.

Learn about Health in All Policies projects

PHI’s Population Health Innovation Lab (PHIL) brings new options for innovation to public health. In the same way that Silicon Valley creates lasting change through new perspectives on old challenges, at PHIL we use new approaches, new technologies, and new partnerships to develop solutions for our communities’ most complex problems—and then share and spread what works.

Working directly with communities in need, PHIL moves beyond the symptoms to address the root issues and the systems at the heart of the challenge. We bring together a wide range of communities, innovators, funders, and public health professionals to use new tools and methodologies in new ways.

At the same time, we also harness the assets PHI has amassed over its 50 years at the forefront of public health: nationally ranked researchers, diverse and proven programs, strong infrastructure, and a wide network of partners.

Learn about Population Health Innovation Lab (PHIL) projects

The Public Health Alliance of Southern California is a collaboration of leaders from Southern California local health departments, which are statutorily responsible for the health of over half of California’s population. The Alliance addresses regional chronic disease prevention through upstream multi-sector policy and systems and environmental change. Current priority initiatives include multidisciplinary collaborations advancing transportation; food environments; and healthy community data indicators. The regional approach provides a mobilized, collective public health voice to actively promote the health of all Southern Californian communities.

Learn about Public Health Alliance of Southern California projects

QI On-TAP is a program that was created to provide technical assistance in the area public health accreditation readiness including performance management, quality improvement, strategic planning, community health improvement planning, and workforce development. 

Learn about QI On Tap: Quality Improvement Onsite Technical Assistance Program projects

The Survey Research Group (SRG) conducts population based health-related surveys, using one of the country's most technologically advanced call centers. Since 1987, public health officials, advocates and researchers use the data for: tracking health risks, identifying emerging problems, improving treatment, and evaluating programs. SRG’s mission is to foster health, well-being, and quality of life through rigorous quantitative and qualitative research guided by the principles of equity in health, environment, education and economic context. Read more about SRG's services.

Learn about Survey Research Group projects