TRUSTEES OF TUFTS COLLEGE INC

Administrative Supplement in support of Comparative Effectiveness Research Workforce Development The proposed Web-based Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) survey course will be a one credit (30 hour) course delivered in the Spring 2011 semester, featuring 15 two-hour lectures by Tufts CTSI faculty. Matriculated students in our program will receive course credit upon completion of a CER-related research project comparing evidence or analytical methods.The course will be open to any researcher in the Tufts community and available for continuing medical education (CME) credit. Once the course is captured and produced electronically it will be available for CME credit on our website www.tuftsctsi.org to any researcher and will be promoted specifically to CTSA Consortium members. The proposed course will include a detailed review of the rationale, framework and methods for conducting CER. The CER agenda represents a portion of the overall translational chain from bench-to-bedside, beside-to-practice, and practice to public benefit and policy. The CER segment of this chain, covered in the course lectures, includes four major stages: 1) evidence generation; 2) evidence synthesis; 3) evidence integration; and 4) use of evidence in decision making. Students will be exposed to structured case studies of federally funded evidence synthesis. The synthesis will be drawn from one of the 14 priority conditions and populations identified by AHRQ and from one or more of the IOM’s list of 100 priorities for CER. For example, students may review the US Preventive Service Task Force (USPSTF) Mammography Guideline or the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Decision Memo on CT Colonography. At the conclusion of the course, students will be familiar with the rationale for CER, a framework for understanding the CER agenda, the major methods in CER and expected developments in research funding, policy and regulation. Students will be able to evaluate the quality of evidence generation, synthesis, integration and decision making from an actual evidence-based report. Our mission is to help translate biomedical research into impact on healthcare and public health. By offering training to investigators on a national level, we intend to influence awareness and acceptance of the benefits grounded in CER methods and analysis and thus to develop the workforce needed to conduct CER on the scale required for real support of healthcare improvement.

Clarification of Codes