Prevention Research Centers and Health Services Research

University of Kentucky: Prevention Research Center

Topics:
Community Health

To determine how many of CDC’s Prevention Research Centers’ projects address health services research (HSR), researchers analyzed the centers’ 2001 and 2002 annual reports and the abstracts from the HSR Projects in Progress Database, which includes abstracts of ongoing federal and private grants and contracts (http://www.academyhealth.org/hsrproj/search.htm). Researchers created a table showing the extent to which the projects addressed one of six HSR topic area (organization and financing of health care, access to care, practitioner and consumer behavior, quality of care, clinical decision-making, and effectiveness and outcomes) and focused on one of these three components of public health research: conducting assessments, assuring availability and effectiveness of health services, and developing policies. In a similar table, researchers indicated the associations of HSR to research programs aimed at primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, asthma, heart disease, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, oral disease, injury, and stroke. After analyzing the tables, researchers proposed three recommendations: identify gaps in HSR, provide CDC-funded projects that require collaboration with HSR centers, and promote the importance of HSR by creating a CDC-wide HSR committee and adding HSR as a topic for annual reports and the annual CDC Chronic Disease Conference.

 

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