Contact Us
- Email: orprn@ohsu.edu
- Tel: 503-494-0361
- Fax: 503-494-1513
Physical address
ORPRN's headquarters are located on Portland's South Waterfront:
3030 S Moody Avenue, Suite 160
Portland, OR 97201
Map of ORPRN Physical Address
Mailing address
Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network
3181 S.W. Sam Jackson Park Road
Mail Code: L222
Portland, OR 97239-3098
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Partner With Us
Bring Your Project to ORPRN
ORPRN researchers and staff regularly work with investigators from across OHSU, Oregon and the country. If you are a researcher with a project idea that fits with our mission and expertise, we want to partner with you.
ORPRN's mission is to improve health for all Oregonians through community engaged Research, Education and Health Systems Transformation.
- We have ongoing conversations with primary care clinicians, payers, health systems and community members throughout Oregon, with a special emphasis on rural and frontier communities. We strive to understand the realities of day-to-day clinical practice.
- We are researchers with experience in multiple types of methodologies, from pragmatic clinical trials to dissemination and implementation to community engaged participatory research. We have skilled qualitative and quantitative analysts who support project design, implementation and analyses and project managers who move projects successfully from inception through recruitment and enrollment to completion.
- We have mastered Practice Facilitation (also known as practice coaching) through two decades of experience. We meet primary care practice staff where they are and help them assess, create, implement and improve everything from simple quality improvement projects to complex research trials. Our facilitators establish ongoing relationships with practices, clinicians and staff, and several live throughout Oregon, bring their lived experiences to the position.
- We create and provide education to practicing clinicians through webinars, technical assistance programs and our innovative and successful Project ECHO telementoring programs. The Oregon ECHO Network within ORPRN produces dozens of high-quality programs for primary care, behavioral health, skilled nursing facilities, peers and more that utilize multi-disciplinary teams of experts to mentor and assist community providers.
Whether you are starting out with your first project or are an experienced investigator, if you are interested in practice-based research, working with community practices and their partners or want to incorporate facilitation into your work, consider partnering with ORPRN.
ORPRN is ready to support your research with everything from project planning and recruitment to data analysis and dissemination.
To begin the process, click the button below and fill out the form to tell us about your project and what support you are looking for:
ORPRN's Misson
Improve health for all Oregonians through community engaged Research, Education and Health Systems Transformation.
Contact Us
Partner with Us
A message from ORPRN's Director, Melinda Davis, Ph.D.
I started last year by emphasizing the dramatic changes underway, and indeed, the year remained particularly turbulent for health care and research in the US. Despite the headwinds, ORPRN was very productive conducting over 82 studies and projects across Oregon.
This included hosting 35 Extension for Community Health Outcome (ECHO) Programs, delivering 40 Technical Assistance Events, and involving 8,414 participants in research. The 2024-2025 ORPRN Annual Impact Report spotlights these accomplishments and more — I encourage you to take a few moments to review it.
Enter 2026. I'm preparing as I do in a normal year, blocking my calendar, strategizing around deadlines and team structure. But if I've learned anything since 2020....it's that there might not be a year that's "normal" again. Thus, each year I reaffirm a goal to learn how to lead and succeed during times of complex change.
The challenges of working within a dynamic environment requires new ways of thinking. Last year a colleague shared an article titled "The New Dynamics of Strategy: Sense-making in a complex-complicated world" by Kurtz and Snowden (2003). It challenges basic assumptions around decision making and has some interesting lessons. One lesson is framed around perceiving organizational decisions as a product of the interactions of the people within that organization. And, that people are influenced by their multiple experiences, because “we all, individually and collectively, have many roots, cultural, religious, geographic, tribal" — a rough translation of the Welsh word "cynefin". Another lesson emphasizes the need to realize that we operate in orderly, complex, and chaotic contexts, and that each requires different leadership strategies and tools.
Perhaps a good example of this is the Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Program, which represents a dramatic shift in support for rural health care. The State of Oregon received its official Notice of Award for $197.3 million dollars from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to “improve access to high-quality, reliable care and support long-term improvements in health outcomes for rural communities.” The ORPRN team came together quickly to take part in Oregon Health Authority’s (OHA) statewide engagement to provide input to this proposal. As this work launches, OHA is starting to work with many of ORPRN’s rural partners throughout Oregon on community-driven projects, and we are excited to see the transformation that the year might bring.
For me, this year is about going back to the basics. For ORPRN this means leading educational, health policy, and research activities that serve the needs of rural Oregonians and help improve access to and quality of health care. As an individual and leader, this coming year I plan to focus on kindness, connection, excellence, and cultivating safety and belonging in the places we can. I also seek to support my team and colleagues in making time for rest, recovery, and celebration throughout the year. I think 2026 (and beyond) will continue to be dynamic. I am hopeful that by drawing together and remembering our basics we will continue to find ways to thrive as individuals and organizations.
— Melinda Davis, Ph.D., ORPRN Director