HRSA awarded three sets of grants and cooperative agreements totaling nearly $17 million to research comparable treatments and strategies to improve health outcomes for patients. The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) funds made available by ARRA, will establish a network of PCOR centers, enable PCOR in pediatric emergency medicine, and support building capacity for community-based providers to do this type of research.
HRSA Administrator Mary Wakefield said, “These funds enable us to invest in robust systems and infrastructure to bring patient-centered research knowledge into everyday clinical decision-making for the diverse and vulnerable populations that are often under-represented in this kind of research.”
One of the grants awarded separately totaling $3.5 million will be made to the American Academy of Pediatrics at Elk Grove Village, Illinois. The funding will support development of an EHR sub-network within the Pediatric Research Network in the Office Setting.
Five cooperative agreement awards will go to organizations in four states to create the Community Health Applied Research Network (CHARN). The network will be in place to demonstrate how safety net providers and academic institutions can partner together to create an effective infrastructure to support patient-centered outcomes research.
CHARN will consist of a Central Data Management Coordinating Center, based at the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals’ Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon along with four networks selected as research “nodes” in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Oregon. The nodes are geographically dispersed consortia of safety net providers in 17 states.
Three of the four research nodes will focus on patient-centered outcomes research related to the delivery of primary care, while the fourth research node located in Boston will focus more specifically on research relevant to treating individuals with HIV/AIDS.
Another grant totaling $3.5 million will be awarded to Columbia University to support patient-centered outcomes research within the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN). The funds will help boost data capacity, conduct studies and disseminate information on research findings involving pediatric emergency care.
