To understand and describe the scope of recent investments in primary care research, our team first developed a comprehensive list of AHRQ's primary care related grants and contracts with active funding during the Federal fiscal years 2021 and 2022 (October 2020 through September 2022).
We generated a list of 181 unique results from searches of AHRQ grants in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) RePORTER website with the term "primary care" included in the title and/or abstract. Conducting an additional search of AHRQ’s grant database (using the same fiscal years and search term), our team identified two additional AHRQ grants with a primary care focus, which were added to the list. AHRQ also shared a list of 29 contracts they identified as potentially related to primary care and were funded during the same time period.
Expanding on a previously developed AHRQ definition,1 in this report we define "primary care research" as that which meets at least one of the following criteria:
- is conducted in a primary care setting;
- is about primary care patients, clinicians, or teams;
- is focused on a topic integral to the primary care setting; or
- has clear implications for the delivery of primary care.
Using this definition of primary care research, the Abt team reviewed each grant and contract in this list to identify any that should be excluded (e.g., grants focused on surgical care without clear implications for a primary care setting). The AHRQ team reviewed Abt's recommended exclusions and by consensus, made the final determination about which grants and contracts should be removed. The final list included a total of 128 grants and 12 contracts.
Once we had a comprehensive list of AHRQ's primary care grants (including cooperative agreements) and contracts, the Abt team developed a database with information about each grant to allow for the analysis included in the Overview of AHRQ's Recent Investments in Primary Care Research section of this report.
For each grant, the Abt team coded the top three key topic areas using areas of focus and interest that AHRQ had identified for their draft primary care research agenda (see call out box). To do this, the Abt team reviewed the description of each grant on the NIH RePORTER, and selected the key topic area that best matched the main focus of the grant. As relevant, we then added the second and third most relevant key topic areas (each unique grant was assigned either one, two, or three key topic areas depending on the foci of the grant). Inconsistencies among team members about which key topic areas should be assigned were resolved through discussion and consensus. The Abt team also added secondary codes for each grant to capture additional themes. These additional themes included areas of interest to AHRQ which were identified a priori, such as multiple chronic conditions, telehealth, and women’s health/reproductive health, as well as themes identified through our review of the grants, including COVID-19, patient safety, opioids, and clinical decision support. We did not conduct a similar analysis of contracts due to the small number included in this report, limited available information, and the wide range of topics and purposes.
The short summaries of grants shared in the tables throughout this report were developed based on the descriptions provided in the NIH RePORTER. The Abt team reviewed AHRQ’s website to identify the primary care relevant initiatives and resources developed in 2021 and 2022, and this search was augmented by information provided by AHRQ.
To select the grants to be highlighted in this report via Research Profiles and Emerging Research Spotlights, Senior Advisors to this report (Yalda Jabbarpour, MD; Medical Director of the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies and Kevin Grumbach, MD; Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco) reviewed the list of grants to identify which studies were most likely to have an impact on, or be of greatest interest to, the primary care field. The Abt team drafted these summaries based on information provided in the NIH RePORTER and grant publications. Our team shared each grant summary with the Principal Investigator (PI) to verify key information, validate our understanding of the study’s approach and findings, and glean additional insights and lessons learned beyond those available in the published literature.
Key Topic Areas:
- Practice and Quality improvement
- Healthcare Systems and Infrastructure (including payment)
- Digital Healthcare
- Person-Centered Care
- Behavioral Health and Substance Use Disorders
- Health Equity
- Primary Care Workforce
- Public Health and Community integration
