Our Beginnning
The Northern New England CO-OP Practice and Community Based Research Network (NNE CO-OP PCBRN) was founded in 1972 as the Dartmouth CO-OP Primary Care Practice Based Research Network (PBRN) by enthusiastic primary care clinicians working towards improving the quality of healthcare. We are considered the oldest PBRN in the United States and as such we have an extensive voluntary cooperative network composed of primary care providers, healthcare workers, researchers, and patient and family representatives. Our members represent various clinics and communities within Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Our administration hub in Lebanon, New Hampshire, serves as an operational based for primary care clinicians, their practices, and their communities, to work together to answer community-based healthcare questions and translate research findings into practice. You can find us housed within the Department of Community & Family Medicine at Dartmouth Health.
What We Do
We value clinicians and our community which is why our mission is to bring clinicians together, help them formulate and carry out their research, and then report their findings back directly to their community. We try to help our clinicians not only connect with their local communities but have each other working in tandem. Science alone isn’t the answer to high quality health care, thus we try to involve our communities directly in the process of continued research and quality improvement projects that our clinicians implement.
Transition from Dartmouth to Northern New England
In our monthly newsletter, many of you may have noticed that the CO-OP has a new name: The Northern New England CO-OP Practice & Community Based Research Network. With the expansion of our relationship with the Northern New England CTR, we have now increased the CO-OP footprint into Maine and Vermont. By adding ”Northern New England” to our name we are building on a longstanding relationship with Maine
Dartmouth Family Practice Residency in central Maine, as well as our longstanding relationships with many clinicians throughout Vermont. The second change in our name is the addition of the word “Community”, this addition allows us to continue to honor the legacy of those who have been longstanding members of the CO-OP and the work they do in their local communities. We felt that the time was right to make the formal name change and to capitalize on the strengths of our primarily rural northern New England communities and to highlight the work we do in our clinical practices as a result of our clinical research that affects not only the practice of medicine but the patients we serve in those communities.