Feature Story

AHRQ expands therapeutics education and research centers and adds new topics: Health IT, economics, and formularies

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has awarded $41.6 million over the next 4 years for a new coordinating center and 10 research centers as part of its Centers for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs) program. Four new centers are also added to the CERTs program.

The new AHRQ-funded CERTs Coordinating Center is Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon. The Center for Health Research will assume infrastructure and leadership support for the CERTs National Steering Committee and research centers. In addition, it will expand the program's ability to translate research findings through collaborations with other research networks, including the National Institutes of Health Roadmap's Clinical Trials Initiative, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical and Translational Science Awards, and AHRQ's Effective Healthcare Program.

The four new CERTs program centers receiving first-time funding are:

• Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, which will focus on how health information technology can improve the safe use of medications.
• The University of Illinois at Chicago, which will focus on how reinvigorating formularies promote best medication uses.
• Cincinnati's Children's Hospital Medical Center, which will focus on improving pediatric patient care through projects, such as how children's metabolism may affect drug effectiveness and safety.
• The University of Chicago, which will focus on hospital use of medications and other therapeutics and their clinical and economic implications.

Six previously funded CERTs research centers won new funding awards:

• Duke University (therapies for disorders of the heart and blood vessels).
• Harvard Pilgrim Health Care on behalf of the HMO Research Network (drug use, safety, and effectiveness in defined populations cared for by health plans).
• University of Alabama at Birmingham (therapies for disorders of the joints and bones).
• The Arizona CERT at the Critical Path Institute (potentially harmful drug interactions, particularly in women).
• University of Pennsylvania (therapies for infectious diseases).
• Vanderbilt University (prescription drug use in a Medicaid population).

The remaining four centers, which received funding in 2006, are: MD Anderson, Texas (risk and health communication; patient, consumer, and professional education); Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (mental health therapies); the University of Iowa (improving elderly care, both therapeutics and care management); and the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York (therapeutic medical devices).

The CERTs program, which AHRQ administers in partnership with the Food and Drug Administration, was originally authorized by Congress in 1997 to examine the benefits, risks, and cost-effectiveness of therapeutic products; educate patients, consumers, doctors, pharmacists, and other clinical personnel; and improve quality of care while reducing unnecessary costs by increasing appropriate use of therapeutics and preventing adverse effects and their medical consequences. For more information, go to http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/certsovr.htm.

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