Excerpt

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is the lead Federal agency charged with improving the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care for all Americans. As 1 of 12 agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, AHRQ supports health services research to improve the quality of health care and promote evidence-based decisionmaking; AHRQ supports a variety of comparative effectiveness or patient-centered outcomes research (CER/PCOR) activities through its Effective Health Care (EHC) Program. The EHC Program funds individual researchers, research centers, and academic organizations that work with AHRQ to produce effectiveness and comparative effectiveness research for clinicians, consumers, and policymakers. To contribute to its agenda for CER/PCOR activities related to mental health, AHRQ contracted the RTI International-University of North Carolina (RTI-UNC) Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) and the Scientific Resource Center Stakeholder Engagement Team to engage a broad and representative group of stakeholders to discuss issues related to serious mental illness (SMI) in a series of three meetings (Issues Exploration Forum [IEF]), as detailed in the methods section.

Contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Methods
  • Stakeholder Engagement
• Results
• Discussion
  • Need To Fundamentally Change Our Approach to Clinical Research for Serious Mental Illness
  • Comparisons of Evidence-Based Interventions and Addressing Knowledge Gaps
  • Priority Populations
  • Using Stakeholder Engagement to Identify Priorities for Research
• References
• Appendixes
  • Appendix A Issues Exploration Forum Stakeholder Participants
  • Appendix B Detailed Prioritized List of Topics

Prepared for: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services¹, Contract No. 290-2007-10056-I. Prepared by: RTI-UNC Evidence-based Practice Center, Research Triangle Park, NC

Suggested citation:

Jonas D, Mansfield AJ, Curtis P, Gilmore J, Watson L, Brode S, Crotty K, Viswanathan M, Tant E, Gordon C, Slaughter-Mason S, Sheitman B. Identifying Priorities for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research for Serious Mental Illness. Research White Paper. (Prepared by the RTI-UNC Institute Evidence-based Practice Center under Contract No. 290-2007-10056-I.) AHRQ Publication No. 11-EHC066-EF. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. September 2011. Available at: www.effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov/reports/final.cfm.

This report is based on research conducted by the RTI-UNC Institute Evidence-based Practice Center under contract to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Rockville, MD (Contract No. 290-2007-10056-I). The findings and conclusions in this document are those of the author(s), who are responsible for its content, and do not necessarily represent the views of AHRQ. No statement in this report should be construed as an official position of AHRQ or of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The information in this report is intended to help clinicians, employers, policymakers, and others make informed decisions about the provision of health care services. This report is intended as a reference and not as a substitute for clinical judgment.

This report may be used, in whole or in part, as the basis for the development of clinical practice guidelines and other quality enhancement tools, or as a basis for reimbursement and coverage policies. AHRQ or U.S. Department of Health and Human Services endorsement of such derivative products or actions may not be stated or implied.

None of the investigators have any affiliations or financial involvement that conflicts with the material presented in this report.

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