Other Projects

AGENCY FOR HEALTHCARE RESEARCH AND QUALITY EFFECTIVE HEALTH CARE PROGRAM

The Effective Health Care (EHC) Program provides health care decision makers (consumers, clinicians, policymakers, and other stakeholders) with high quality information about health care interventions. The information provided is based on government funded research comparing different treatments and interventions for various health conditions. The EHC Program is sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in the federal Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Investigators at Evidence-based Practice Centers and other institutions compare available evidence, or generate new evidence, on health care treatments and technologies.

Research findings are then translated into easy to read summary guides that highlight the main points from the research. The goal of the EHC Program is to help people make well-informed health care decisions based on the best available evidence.

The Center for Evidence-based Policy comprised the Stakeholder Engagement Team for the EHC Program from 2007 to 2010. In this role, the Center designed and provided ongoing support of strategic stakeholder engagement activities, including:

• Staffing and facilitating a national advisory group of stakeholders
• Recruiting stakeholders and stakeholder organizations for participation in EHC Program research processes
• Recruiting and assisting stakeholders and stakeholder organizations in the nomination of research topics
• Strategically engaging and supporting stakeholders and stakeholder organization involved in EHC Program activities
• Supporting and training investigators in the effective engagement of stakeholders in research processes
• Designing and executing pilot projects to improve stakeholder engagement techniques
• Staffing and facilitating national forums to prioritize research in areas with low levels of evidence, or few available research topics

EARLY CHILDHOOD AND FAMILY INVESTMENT POLICY

Every year about 45,000 children are born in Oregon. Nearly half of these children are exposed to socio-economic, physical or relational risk factors which adversely impact their ability to develop the foundations of school success. These include poverty, unstable family backgrounds, substance abuse, criminal records and negative peer associations. Today, Oregon spends approximately $380 million per year on services for children ages 0 to 5, not including healthcare, K-12 and tertiary human services. Currently there is also a wide range of public, private and non-profit programs, services and organizations focused on early childhood care and education. Although some of these programs and services are delivering very good results, Oregon does not consistently track these results. The programs and services do not work in concert and some are disconnected from the K-12 education system.

Seeing these challenges as an opportunity for fundamental systemic change, Governor Kitzhaber appointed an Early Childhood and Family Investment team to recommend strategies for a sustained investment in early childhood as a foundational element in achieving the state’s long term educational and economic objectives. Based on the Governor’s charge, the goal of the Early Childhood and Family Investment team was to integrate state funded services, agencies and structures to ensure that every child enters school ready and able to learn, enters first grade ready to read, and leaves first grade reading.

After surveying the research and reaching out to early childhood service providers across the state, the team produced a set of recommendations that change the way in which Oregon identifies, delivers, and funds services  so that a more efficient, accountable approach is used which delivers measurable results. The Governor has since created the Early Learning Design Team, who will work through June 30, 2011 and design the implementation of these recommendations.  Implementation may require enactment by the 2012 legislature as well as interim, non-legislative processes to implement a new system as of July 1, 2012.

Staff from the Center for Evidence-based Policy co-chaired and staffed the production of the initial set of recommendations and will continue with the ongoing design and implementation efforts.

Early Childhood Transition Project Report

PREVENTION HEALTH AND WELLNESS

An overwhelming majority of our healthcare resources are directed towards one of the least influential factors on health status – acute care. Our current systems do not address the predominate influences on our health status. Americans currently spend 80% of healthcare resources to treat preventable, acute medical complications, despite the fact that the greatest influences on our lifetime health status are social, lifestyle, behavioral and socio-economic factors. With diminishing resources and increasing demands, we can no longer afford to ignore prevention and focus predominately on acute conditions in isolation of their underlying social and behavioral factors. Nor can we afford to focus on any of these factors in isolation.

The Prevention and Wellness Health Demonstration (PWHD) Project is a collaboration of community partners convened by the Oregon Community Foundation, and representing government, health, and social sectors, working together to address this problem. The PWHD collaborative is working to design:

1. A public-private partnership that pilots the Early Childhood and Family Investment report, and integrates health and social support services for a defined population of children in Multnomah County with complex health and behavioral conditions. The Project plans to combine and coordinate the management of lifestyle and behavioral factors on health status, with an emphasis on prevention and maximizing the capacity of individuals and families to oversee their own wellbeing; and

2. An innovative finance approach, similar to tax increment financing. In this approach, partners would be advanced resources to fund collaborative care. Remuneration of the investment would be delayed in order to accrue return, and would adhere to rigorous financial controls and program accountability.

The Center for Evidence-based Policy is leading and staffing these efforts.