AHRQ Views Blog: A Milestone Investment in Training for Learning Health Systems Scientists

AHRQ Stats: Life Expectancy Among Americans

In 2021, the average life expectancy in the United States decreased to 76.1 years, compared with an average of 77 years in 2020 and 78.8 years in 2019. Life expectancy in comparable countries improved to 82.4 years in 2021 from 82.1 years in 2020. (Source: AHRQ 2023 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report [PDF, 9 MB].) 

Today's Headlines:

• AHRQ Views Blog: A Milestone Investment in Training for Learning Health Systems Scientists.
• AHRQ Updates the Agency’s Research Priorities.
• Universal Coronavirus Vaccine Would Provide Significant Health and Financial Benefits.
• Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network.
• Register Now for Webinars on AHRQ’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.
• AHRQ in the Professional Literature.

AHRQ Views Blog: A Milestone Investment in Training for Learning Health Systems Scientists

A new initiative designed to advance training for learning health system scientists is the subject of an AHRQ Views blog post. The initiative, sponsored by AHRQ and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), will invest up to $80 million over five years to support learning health systems, including patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research. In its first year, the Learning Health System Embedded Scientist Training and Research (LHS E-StaR) Centers initiative will provide $16 million for 16 centers nationwide. Through this initiative, AHRQ and PCORI are collaborating to train a new cadre of scientists who will create new models of learning health system infrastructure that will use evidence generated by these scientists' research to optimize patient care. Access the blog post, authored by AHRQ Director Robert Otto Valdez, Ph.D., M.H.S.A., and PCORI Executive Director Nakela L. Cook, M.D., M.P.H. To receive all blog posts, submit your email address.

AHRQ Updates the Agency’s Research Priorities

AHRQ has updated its research priorities, a proactive effort to ensure that the agency’s research investments address the most pressing challenges in healthcare delivery and have the greatest possible impact on patient outcomes. The priority areas guide health services research investigator-initiated grant applications submitted to response to agency Notices of Funding Opportunity. The priorities are:

• Research on patient safety: As the lead federal agency for advancing patient safety, AHRQ invests in research and implementation projects that bridge the gap between research and the delivery of safer patient care. An important element of this work is research on the prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections.
• Research to improve healthcare delivery and practice improvement: AHRQ supports research that advances understanding of how to improve healthcare delivery, with an emphasis on strengthening primary care.
• Research to enhance whole-person healthcare delivery: AHRQ supports research on the delivery of person-centered healthcare. As part of this effort, agency investments are aimed at eliminating health inequities across the life course while emphasizing the needs of older adults and children with complex medical conditions.

Universal Coronavirus Vaccine Would Provide Significant Health and Financial Benefits

Stockpiling a universal vaccine that provides at least partial protection against all human coronaviruses, including the one that led to the COVID-19 pandemic, could potentially save lives and the U.S. healthcare system billions of dollars, according to a study partially funded by AHRQ. In the study, published in Lancet eClinicalMedicine, researchers used modeling to analyze various scenarios of coronavirus spread and vaccine deployment. When 25 percent of the U.S. population is vaccinated within two months, every one percent increase in efficacy between 10 percent and 50 percent could avert an additional 395,000 infections and save $1 billion in total societal costs. The universal vaccine would provide a cost savings even when a strain-specific coronavirus vaccine would be subsequently available, as long as it took at least two to three months to develop, test and bring that more specific vaccine to the market.  Access the article.

Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network

AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network (PSNet) highlights journal articles, books and tools related to patient safety. Articles featured this week include:

• Diagnostic errors in hospitalized adults who died or were transferred to intensive care.
• Development of prescribing indicators related to opioid-related harm in patients with chronic pain in primary care–a modified e-Delphi study.
• Nurses' perception of medication administration errors and factors associated with their reporting in the neonatal intensive care unit.
• A combined assessment tool of teamwork, communication, and workload in hospital procedural units.

Review additional new publications in PSNet’s current issue or access recent cases and commentaries in AHRQ’s WebM&M (Morbidity and Mortality Rounds on the Web).

Register Now for Webinars on AHRQ’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey

Registration is open for webinars on AHRQ’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), the nation’s most complete source of data on the cost and use of healthcare and health insurance coverage. The webinars will offer a general overview plus hands-on sessions on addressing challenges that researchers face when linking the MEPS-Household Component Medical Conditions public use data file to the Prescribed Medicines public use data file. Attendees will be encouraged to ask questions pertaining to their research. Access more information, including how to register for one of the two-hour webinars, which are scheduled for 11:30 a.m. ET on Jan. 30, Jan. 31 and Feb. 1.

AHRQ in the Professional Literature

The SIMPLE architectural pattern for integrating patient-facing apps into clinical workflows: desiderata and application for lung cancer screening. Balbin CA, Kawamoto K. AMIA Annu Symp Proc 2024 Jan 11;2023:844-53. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Critical revisits among children after emergency department discharge. Cavallaro SC, Michelson KA, D'ambrosi G, et al. Ann Emerg Med 2023 Nov;82(5):575-82. Epub 2023 Jul 18. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Patient perspectives on a proposed pharmacy-based colorectal cancer screening program. Ferrari RM, Atkins DL, Wangen M, et al. Transl Behav Med 2023 Dec 15;13(12):909-18. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Antibiotic use among infants admitted to neonatal intensive care units. Flannery DD, Zevallos Barboza A, Mukhopadhyay S, et al. JAMA Pediatr 2023 Dec;177(12):1354-6. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Improving hospital quality risk-adjustment models using interactions identified by hierarchical group lasso regularisation. Ray M, Zhao S, Wang S, et al. BMC Health Serv Res 2023 Dec 15;23(1):1419. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Team cognition in handoffs: relating system factors, team cognition functions and outcomes in two handoff processes. Wooldridge AR, Carayon P, Hoonakker P, et al. Hum Factors 2024 Jan;66(1):271-93. Epub 2022 Jun 5. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Relationship between community-level distress and cardiac rehabilitation participation, facility access, and clinical outcomes after inpatient coronary revascularization. Thompson MP, Hou H, Stewart JW 2nd, et al. Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes 2023 Nov;16(11):e010148. Epub 2023 Oct 19. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Validation of a simulation-based resuscitation curriculum for maternal cardiac arrest. Shields AD, Vidosh J, Thomson BA, et al. Obstet Gynecol 2023 Nov 1;142(5):1189-98. Epub 2023 Sep 13. Access the abstract on PubMed®.