Comprehensive EPC Comparative Effectiveness Reviews for Effective Health Care

The RTI-UNC Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) will build on existing work of the EPC program within the context of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Effective Health Care (EHC) program to expand the scope and delineation of a comprehensive approach to systematic review for evidence synthesis. The ultimate goal of EPC work is to present the “state of the science” on a given topic in a manner that can be directly applied to decisions made by users of health care information. These users include clinicians, patients and caregivers, policy-makers, funders and payers, and may be individuals or their related organizations. This work focuses on a comprehensive approach to comparative effectiveness reviews (CER) and evidence synthesis through an expanded scope of work with three major work components: 1.) Develop and refine topics for CERs that are informative to stakeholder decisional needs; 2.) Conduct CERs with systematic and transparent methods; 3.) Identify and explicate future research needs that are important to answering real-world healthcare decisions. The RTI-UNC EPC will focus on mental health and substance abuse topics for this work.

EPC ARRA Activities October 2009 – October 2012

Future Research Needs Reports

  1. Research Needs Pilot Project (Integration of Mental Health/Substance Abuse and Primary Care)
  2. Future Research Needs: Comparative Effectiveness of 1st and 2nd Generation Antipsychotics in Children and Young Adults
  3. Future Research Needs: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
  4. Identifying Research Needs for Improving Health Care (White Paper Identifying Gaps)
  5. Future Research Needs: Methods Workgroup 3 – Study Designs
  6. Research Needs Methods Project (Assessing the Impact of AHRQ Research Needs Documents)
  7. Research Needs Methods Project (Developing the software used for prioritization of future research needs)

Topic Developments

  1. Compare Effectiveness of Interventions addressing Concomitant Mental health on Primary Chronic Illness Outcomes
  2. Issues Exploration Forum
  3. Criminal Justice
  4. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
  5. IEF Morbidity and Mortality
  6. Pharmacological Interventions for Alcohol-Use Disorders

Topic Refinements

  1. Foster and adoptive parenting
  2. Screening, Behavioral Counseling, and Pharmacologic Interventions in Primary Care to Reduce Alcohol Misuse
  3. Compare Effectiveness of Interventions addressing Concomitant Mental health on Primary Chronic Illness Outcomes
  4. Comparisons for Long Term Care Settings for Patients with Dementia
  5. Psychological and Pharmacological Treatments for Adults with PTSD
  6. PTSD Treatment in Children
  7. Pharmacological Interventions for Alcohol-Use Disorders

Comparative Effectiveness Reviews

  1. Comparisons for Long Term Care Settings for People with Dementia
  2. Screening, Behavioral Counseling Interventions, and Referral in Primary Care to Reduce Alcohol Misuse
  3. Effectiveness of Interventions Addressing Concomitant Mental Health and Chronic Medical Conditions in the Primary Care Setting
  4. Child Maltreatment
  5. Interventions with Children Exposed to Trauma
  6. Psychological and Pharmacological Treatments for Adults with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
  7. Prevention of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

Other

  1. Capstone Paper
  2. Overall Planning and Development

Principal Investigator: Daniel Jonas, M.D., M.P.H.

Funding Source: RTI via AHRQ

Total Project Period: 09/25/09 – 10/24/12