1.0

Health:

• Essential.
• Distribution of health and disease in populations.
• Models of how health is produced with special emphasis on how health services influence health.
• Health disparities.

2.0

Financing of Health Care:

• Essential.
• Costs of care and cost containment.
• Healthcare markets.
• Links between financing and organization of health services.
• Coverage policy.
• Provider payment.

3.0

Organization of Health Care:

• Essential.
• Organizational theory (which may merit a separate category).
• Models for understanding behavior of organizations.
• Measurement of health organizational characteristics.
• Health workforce.
• Models for understanding human behavior within health organizations.

4.0

Health Policy:

• Essential: Understanding the impact of health policy.
• Optional: Health policy analysis.
• Health policy formation and implementation.
• Role of advocacy.

5.0

Health Care Law:

• Optional.
• Effects of legal environment on organization and financing of health care.
• Using the legal system to improve health.
• Links between regulation and health system performance and outcomes.

6.0

Ethics and Health Care:

• Optional.
• Models for the just allocation of resources.
• Equity.
• Resource allocation.
• Ethical principles that help explain health system effects on the patient-provider relationship.

7.0

Health Care Seeking, Access, and Use:

• Essential.
• Models of access, use, and health care seeking behavior.
• Health beliefs and preferences.
• Healthcare disparities.

8.0

Quality of Care:

• Esssential: Knowledge about quality of care.
• Optional:: Quality improvement applications.
• Quality of care frameworks.
• System-oriented approach to understanding quality and improving quality.
• Effectiveness and outcomes research.
• Patient safety.
• Quality improvement.

9.0

Health Care Decisionmaking:

• Optional.
• Category could be embedded within health care organization.
• Models of individual and health professional decisionmaking.
• Ways to improve shared decisionmaking between patients and professionals.

10.0

Health Informatics:

• Essential.
• Computer-assisted decisionmaking.
• Use of electronic media as data collection devices.
• Knowledge of common health care classification systems.

11.0

Scientific Method and Theory:

• Essential.
• Scientific method: theory and application.
• Philosophy of science.
• Hypothesis development.
• Causality.

12.0

Literature Review:

• Essential.
• Literature review methods.
• Meta-analysis.
• Putting a research study into the context of prior work.

13.0

Study Design:

• Essential.
• Intervention study design: experimental and quasi-experimental.
• Threats to validity and bias associated with alternative study designs.
• Longitudinal study designs.
• Unit of analysis.
• Cohort and case-control study design.
• Risk adjustment methods.

14.0

Survey Research:

• Essential.
• Data collection protocols.
• Questionnaire development.
• Sampling methods.
• Subject recruitment.

15.0

Qualitative Research:

• Essential.
• Focus groups, key informant interviews, semi-structured interviews.
• Ethnographic analysis and case study methods.

16.0

HSR Data Sources:

• Essential.
• Database development.
• Matching secondary data to specific HSR questions.

17.0

Measurement and Variables:

• Essential.
• Psychometrics of items, indexes, and scales.
• Reliability and validity.
• Classical and modern measurement theory and applications.

18.0

Data Acquisition and Quality Control:

• Essential.
• Research protocols that standardize procedures in a reproducible way.
• Data entry and data quality control methods.
• Interviewer training manuals.

19.0

Research Ethics:

• Essential.
• Identify human subjects research.
• HIPAA.
• Informed consent and assent.
• Conflicts of interest.
• Responsible conduct of research.

20.0

Teamwork:

• Essential.
• Multi-disciplinary approach to HSR design and implementation.
• Staff supervision.
• Team communication.

21.0

Project Management:

• Optional.
• Project timelines.
• Manage team meetings.
• Personnel management.
• Accounting methods.

22.0

Advanced HSR Analytic Methods:

• Essential.
• Commonly used econometric methods.
• Causal modeling.
• Multivariable linear and logistic regression.
• Generalized linear models.
• Longitudinal and multi-level modeling.
• Non-parametric measures of association.

23.0

Economic Evaluation and Decision Sciences:

• Essential.
• Cost-effectiveness.
• Cost-benefit.
• Cost-utility analyses.

24.0

Proposal Development:

• Essential.
• Write a research project proposal.
• Sponsors of HSR.
• Grant peer review process.

25.0

Dissemination:

• Essential.
• Oral presentation skills.
• Manuscript preparation.
• Manuscript peer review process.
• Translating research into policy and practice.

26.0

Professional Development:

• Optional.
• Develop a plan for lifelong learning in HSR.
• Successfully transitioning from life as a student to a career in HSR.

27.0

Pedagogy:

• Optional.
• Course design.
• Prepare and delivery instructional material.
• Course evaluation.
• Teaching philosophies.