Developing and Disseminating Health Knowledge
Kaiser Permanente Colorado seeks to advance health and quality of care through research, education, and training.
On a national level, Kaiser Permanente's Institute for Health Policy works to increase understanding of key health policy issues. The Institute's goal is to provide balanced information useful to policy makers, researchers, analysts, and others who shape health care policies.
On the research front, we collaborate with our Institute for Health Research to develop and disseminate research knowledge to the public, particularly when the results of the project have applicability to community health and clinical practice. For example, in 2006, our IHR participated in research that reaffirmed the safety of the flu vaccine in young children. The results were used to support the Advisory Committee on Immune Practices’ policy decision to make a universal recommendation to immunize all U.S. children 6-24 months with flu vaccine. As of 2012, the IHR's staff of over 120 is working on more than 160 epidemiological, clinical, behavioral, community, and health services research projects.
Training and Medical Education
Kaiser Permanente Colorado is dedicated to improving our current and future health care workforce. We provide resource and grant funding to support the training of our caregivers. For instance, one of our training programs allows college-aged students to shadow Kaiser Permanente physicians. Our Diversity Development department actively encourages people in minority populations to explore careers in health care. Through our Graduate Medical Education initiative, we provided $7.9 million in 2011 to help train Colorado’s health care workforce and support intern and resident programs.
