Our National Priorities for Research and Research Agenda is a framework to guide our funding of comparative clinical effectiveness research that will give patients and those who care for them the ability to make better-informed health decisions. The framework was developed by workgroups of our Board of Governors, members of our Methodology Committee, and staff. It was revised in response to public comments and accepted by the Board on May 21, 2012.

Our National Priorities are:

• Assessment of Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment Options: Comparing the effectiveness and safety of alternative prevention, diagnosis, and treatment options to see which ones work best for different people with a particular health problem.
• Improving Healthcare Systems: Comparing health system–level approaches to improving access, supporting patient self-care, innovative use of health information technology, coordinating care for complex conditions, and deploying workforce effectively.
• Communication and Dissemination Research: Comparing approaches to providing comparative effectiveness research information, empowering people to ask for and use the information, and supporting shared decision making between patients and their providers.
• Addressing Disparities: Identifying potential differences in prevention, diagnosis, or treatment effectiveness, or preferred clinical outcomes across patient populations and the healthcare required to achieve best outcomes in each population.
• Accelerating Patient-Centered Outcomes Research and Methodological Research: Improving the nation’s capacity to conduct patient-centered outcomes research, by building data infrastructure, improving analytic methods, and training researchers, patients, and other stakeholders to participate in this research.

These broad areas encompass the patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research we support. As our work progresses and we engage with a broad range of patients, caregivers, clinicians, and other healthcare stakeholders, we may develop additional national priorities for research.

To learn more about the process by which we selected these priorities and developed the agenda, click here.

Posted: May 1, 2013; Updated: August 21, 2014