What Is a White Paper?

A white paper examines a single research topic to stimulate thought and to facilitate discussion about an area of emerging interest. Such areas can include technological innovations; gaps in knowledge identified through original research, reviews of research, or methods research; and new knowledge that may inform the development of systems, processes, and methods.

One example of the white papers developed by the Effective Health Care Program is a series of Future Research Needs papers that are intended to be used by researchers and funders of research to help improve the body of comparative effectiveness evidence that would be useful to decisionmakers.