BWH DEcIDE Research Center Receives Boost from AHQR Grants
The BWH DEcIDE Research Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research, under the leadership of Sebastian Schneeweiss, MD, ScD, has received major funding totally nearly $8 million from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
The DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions about Effectiveness) Network, which conducts studies on the effectiveness and safety of medical products and interventions, is a collection of research centers that AHRQ created in 2005. The center, based in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, has been an integral part of this network since its infancy.
The center was awarded a $3 million task order to study the comparative effectiveness of various treatment strategies for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a form of early breast cancer. The project is led by Rinaa Punglia, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Radiation Oncology at HMS, and Deborah Schrag, MD, MPH, associate professor of Medicine at HMS and attending oncologist at the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center.
Another $3.9 million was awarded by AHRQ to enable the DEcIDE Methods Center to develop and test new methods for improved accuracy of comparative effectiveness research based on observational and randomized studies, and to support six ARRA-funded Comparative Effectiveness Research Consortia on topics including cancer care, treatment in end-stage renal disease patients, secondary prevention in patients with heart failure, and surgical glaucoma treatment. Schneeweiss, vice chief of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at BWH, associate professor of Medicine at HMS and associate professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, leads this project together with Robert Glynn, PhD, ScD, associate professor of Medicine (Bisotatistics) and Jerry Avorn, MD, chief of BWH’s Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics and professor of Medicine.
The DEcIDE Center contract was just extended for another three years as part of the DEcIDE-2 Network, which now has a smaller number of centers. As part of the renewed award, the BWH center received a $960,000 contract to lead the CAN-DEcIDE-2 coordinating center for comparative effectiveness research in cancer care. The project is led by Deborah Schrag, MD, MPH, of the DF/BWCC.
The BWH Center is supplemented by two ARRA grants on methods development for non-randomized studies in comparative effectiveness research, led by Schneeweiss, and on translating comparative effectiveness research findings into practice through Academic Detailing, a project headed by Michael Fischer, MD, MS, HMS assistant professor of Medicine, and Avorn.