AHRQ Announces Its Priority Interests For Grant-supported Research

Press Release Date: June 26, 2000

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) today issued a Program Announcement (PA), outlining AHRQ's priority interests for research, demonstration, dissemination, and evaluation projects. Researchers should use these priorities to guide their development of investigator-initiated grant applications.

AHRQ seeks research on a wide range of topics organized under the Agency's Priority Program areas: supporting improvements in health outcomes; strengthening quality measurement and improvement; and, identifying strategies to improve access, foster appropriate use, and reducing unnecessary expenditures. Potential research topics include:

• Effectiveness and cost effectiveness of clinical and organizational interventions.
• Assessment of the impact of diagnostic and other health care technologies on cost and patient outcomes, and how to prioritize such assessments.
• Development and testing of practical, ready-to-use outcomes measures addressing functional status, quality of life, and severity and risk adjustment.
• Innovative approaches to measuring quality, including the perspectives of providers, patients, and consumers.
• Methods for optimal systematic reviews of evidence, including methodological research on meta-analysis, decision analysis, and cost-effectiveness analysis.
• Interventions to address specific patient barriers to preventive care, with specific focus on vulnerable populations, including older women, who may receive fewer and lower quality services.
• Studies of major changes in health care markets.
• Studies examining how variations in health care organizations, structure, and delivery affect the outcomes, quality, access to, cost and use of care.
• Characteristics of primary care practice that lead to improvements in outcomes and quality of care.

AHRQ encourages research using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), and other AHRQ data.

AHRQ's research agenda includes a special focus for health services research on a number of populations: low-income groups; racial and ethnic minority groups; women; children; the elderly; individuals with special health care needs; and, individuals living in inner-city, rural, and frontier areas.

AHRQ also encourages partnerships with public and private organizations to facilitate development and sharing of scientific knowledge and resources, including cost-sharing mechanisms; projects that will produce results within 2-3 years; and results that can be integrated rapidly in practice and policy. Subject topics in areas that are not covered by this PA also will be considered, however, they must contribute to the agency's goals and initiatives.

Full details of the PA, including the names of agency staff members who can be contacted for further information, are located at http://www.ahrq.gov/fund/grantix.htm or by calling (301) 594-2800 from a telephone-equipped facsimile machine. In addition the AHRQ Publications Clearinghouse (write to P.O. Box 8547, Silver Spring, MD 20907-8547, or phone 800-358-9295) can supply the print version of the PA (PA 00-111) as well as all necessary applications forms and instructions.

For more information, contact AHRQ Public Affairs (301) 427-1364: Salina Prasad, (301) 427-1864 (SPrasad@ahrq.gov). Also, visit AHRQ's newly designed Website that has a special section for reporters at http://www.ahrq.gov/news/vnewsix.htm.

Internet Citation:

AHRQ Announces Its Priority Interests For Grant-supported Research. Press Release, June 26, 2000. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/news/press/pr2000/priorpr.htm

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