2009-08-18

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has published a notice announcing the Agency's intention to support new comparative effectiveness research (CER) projects with the $300 million provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. AHRQ anticipates grant and contract solicitations to be published beginning in fall 2009, with funding to commence in spring 2010.

AHRQ’s efforts in this area will initially focus on 14 priority conditions relevant to the programs of Medicare, Medicaid, and State Children's Health Insurance Program, including cancer.

Funding Opportunity Announcements soliciting research grant applications for CER will provide $148 million for evidence generation. This includes $100 million for the Clinical and Health Outcomes Initiative in Comparative Effectiveness, a new, coordinated national effort to establish a series of prospective pragmatic clinical comparative effectiveness studies that measure the benefits treatments produce in routine clinical practice and will include novel study designs focusing on real-world and underrepresented populations (children, elderly, racial and ethnic minorities, and other understudied populations), and $48 million for the establishment or enhancement of national patient registries that can be used for researching the longitudinal effects of different interventions and collecting data on underrepresented populations.

Additional grant funding is expected to include $29.5 million to support innovative translation and dissemination grants related to CER, as well as $20 million to support training and career development in CER. Requests for Contracts for CER will provide $9.5 million to establish an infrastructure to identify new and/or emerging issues for comparative effectiveness review investments.

Interested parties may sign up to receive updates on AHRQ's Web site.

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