From Efficacy to Effectiveness

Call for Abstracts for AHRQ Symposium Poster Session
June 12-13, 2012

John M. Eisenberg Building
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Conference Center
Rockville, Maryland

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), through its Effective Health Care program, is sponsoring a fourth symposium on original research methods for comparative effectiveness (CER) and patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR). The symposium and webcast will be held on June 12 and 13, 2012 at the AHRQ Conference Center in Rockville, Maryland.

The theme of the 2012 symposium is “From Efficacy to Effectiveness.” Invited experts will give podium presentations on innovative research methods to evaluate mechanisms that contribute to the differences in the results of randomized clinical trials (i.e., efficacy studies) and observational studies conducted in real world settings (i.e., outcomes and effectiveness research). The proceedings of the symposium will be published as a special journal supplement in 2013. Papers presented at past symposia were published in the journal Medical Care and the proceedings of the 2011 symposium are forthcoming soon. These AHRQ methods symposia and the associated journal supplements have become important resources for investigators to use in designing and conducting comparative effectiveness studies.
This announcement is an open call for abstracts to other researchers to participate in the symposium and the potential to have a manuscript included in the journal supplement. Investigators at every career level are invited to submit an abstract for a poster presentation at the symposium on innovative methodologic approaches to CER/PCOR. Submissions will be peer-reviewed and approximately ten authors will be invited to attend the symposium and present their work as a poster. At least one author of a poster presentation will be invited to submit a complete manuscript for peer-review and publication in the accompanying journal supplement. Exceptional abstract(s) may also be invited to give an oral presentation at the discretion of the planning committee.
The symposium will focus on original research and the methodological insight or advances that arise from the conduct of the research. Preference will be given to work that a) fits the theme of the symposium; and b) represents an innovative approach to CER/PCOR and the challenges of effectiveness research.

The 2012 Methods in Comparative Effectiveness symposium will seek abstracts of methodologic work that serve to illuminate the mechanisms contributing to differences that might be observed between results from randomized clinical trials of treatments (efficacy) and observational studies of treatments outside of controlled research environments (effectiveness). Methods for dealing with the following suggested categories of sources for heterogeneity are sought: 1. CER in Diverse Populations, 2. Evaluation of Health Care Delivery Systems, 3. Methodological Issues in CER Arising from Regional Variations in Settings of Care, 4. Comparisons Involving Diverse Healthcare Intervention
Accepted abstracts will be included as posters during the symposium.
Cutting across these are four thematic areas:

study design,
data collection, linkage, and measurement,
statistics and analytic methods, and
policy issues and applications.

Applications may come from a wide range of relevant topics such as:

prescription drugs,
medical devices,
invasive and non-invasive procedures,
complex clinical strategies,
healthcare delivery systems and improvement programs, and diagnostics.

The organizers of the conference will coordinate the publication of a journal supplement (journal TBD) that will include manuscripts arising from both the invited presentations and selected posters.
Download the Instructions for Submission of Papers/Presentations for the Symposium (Word Format; 16 kB) and the Abstract Submission Form (Word Format; 26 kB). Authors should submit abstracts electronically using the Abstract Submission Form to DEcIDEMethods@partners.org. The submission deadline is March 1, 2012.