The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Effective Health Care Program (EHC) seeks to improve the quality of healthcare by providing the best available evidence on the outcomes, benefits and harms, and appropriateness of drugs, devices, and healthcare services and by helping healthcare professionals, patients, policymakers, and healthcare systems make informed healthcare decisions. 

The AHRQ created the Evidence-based Practice Centers (EPCs) in 1997 to conduct evidence reports for the EHC Program. The EPCs synthesize existing scientific literature into reviews about important health care topics and promote evidence-based practice and decision-making. These reviews systematically and critically appraise existing research and synthesize knowledge on a particular topic. EPC systematic reviews are based on rigorous, comprehensive methods, emphasizing explicitly detailed documentation of methods rationale and assumptions.

Since 1997, the Pacific Northwest EPC and other EPCs across the country have developed evidence reports and technology assessments on a wide spectrum of topics, both clinical and policy-oriented. Published EPC evidence reports and draft reports open for public comment are available on the AHRQ EHC website:

More about the EPC Program

The objectives of the EPC program are to identify, develop, and refine questions for systematic review, synthesize evidence, and identify future research needs. Task order awards provide funding to:

Promote the synthesis and translation of evidence

• Engage stakeholders to identify and refine questions in which systematic review will help disseminate and translate research findings for the stakeholder audience
• Conduct comparative effectiveness reviews (CERs), technical briefs, and updates of reviews with systematic and transparent methods
• Engage stakeholders to identify and characterize future research needs to inform real world health care decisions
• Collaborate with partners, including other EPCs and AHRQ programs, to promote relevant, consistent, transparent, and valuable implementation of the systematic review process, dissemination of findings from systematic reviews and methodology projects, and the EPC Program as a whole

Improve validity and utility of systematic reviews for decision-making

• Advance methods of systematic review through empiric methods research
• Ensure quality of EPC reviews through associate editor and peer review

Improve consistency and cohesiveness of the EPC Program

• Develop methods guidance and translation of methods guidance to aid implementation efforts for CERs and systematic reviews, reviews of medical tests, identification of future research needs, and topic identification
• Develop tools to improve EPC Program efficiency

The ultimate goal of EPC work is to present the "state of the science" on a given topic in a manner that can be directly applied to decisions made by users of health care information. These users include clinicians, patients, policy-makers, and purchasers and payers of health care, and may be individuals or their related organizations. Specifically, evidence reports and technology assessments have been used as a scientific foundation for development and implementation of clinical practice guidelines, clinical pathways, review criteria, performance measures, and other clinical quality improvements tools, individual treatment decisions, coverage or reimbursement policies, and to develop research agendas.

EPCs work with various partners and stakeholders to review a variety of health care delivery and clinical areas of focus. Clinical areas may focus on traditional therapeutics as well as complementary, alternative, nutritional, and other emerging areas such as genomics and may span from preventive services to implementation of medical devices. Of particular note, the AHRQ Effective Health Care program works with a variety of partners and conducts reviews through the EPC for a variety of other Federal programs including the US Preventive Services Task Force, the Technology Assessment Program, and other Federal agencies, such as individual centers within the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Health and Human Services, or other Federal branches of government.