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Effective Health Care Program

Submit a Suggestion for a New Evidence Review

What health care decisions are you struggling with? Would a review of the evidence help inform this decision? The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) Program wants to hear from you so that the program can identify important and relevant topics for future evidence reports.

The EPC Program reviews and summarizes the available evidence on current health care issues, such as tests, treatments, and methods of health care delivery, and describes their advantages or disadvantages. These reviews are based on relevant published and unpublished scientific literature and provide comprehensive, evidence-based information to consumers, clinicians, and policymakers. Evidence reports can help:

  • Patients make better decisions about their health care options;
  • Clinicians and policymakers understand the benefits and harms of different tests and treatments; and
  • Health systems and policymakers understand the best options for implementing a new program or intervention.
Did you know that Federal agencies can contract with AHRQ through an Interagency Agreement (IAA) to conduct evidence reports? IAA contracts do not require suggestions to be submitted via this Web page. To get started or for more information on the process of establishing an IAA with the AHRQ EPC Program, please contact epc@ahrq.gov.

Before you get started

When you submit a suggestion, you are nominating a potential topic for a potential evidence report and subsequent resources produced for the Effective Health Care (EHC) Program to develop, disseminate, and implement.

Evidence reports are based on existing published research. Therefore, there must be sufficient published literature about a topic in order for an evidence report to be conducted. If you are interested in submitting ideas for new primary research funding (i.e., not a topic for evidence report), go to Funding Announcements.

Submit your suggestion

Please fill in the form below as completely as possible and click on "submit" at the end. If you prefer, you may fill out the Microsoft Word format (.doc) version of the form and email the completed form to epc@ahrq.gov, or you may print the completed form and mail it to:

Kara Winchell, M.A.
AHRQ Effective Health Care Program
c/o Portland VA Medical Center (R&D 71)
3710 SW U.S. Veterans Hospital Road
Portland, OR 97239

If you have any supporting documents you would like to include with your nomination, you can include them while submitting the form online, send them as additional attachments (if emailing), or include them (if mailing).

Your suggested topic as well as responses to the nomination questions (except personal identification information) will be posted for others to view in the Read Suggested Topics for Research.

Topic Suggestion

Please provide the following information about your topic suggestion:

  • What is the issue or question?
    Some examples include: For adult patients with a major depressive disorder (MDD), what are the comparative risks and benefits of older versus newer antidepressants? Are interventions for treating adults with MDD used in specialty care settings effective in primary care settings? What strategies will promote uptake of screening for depression?
  • Identify the population of interest, including details such as age range, gender, coexisting diagnoses, and reasons for therapy.
  • Identify the interventions (treatments, tests, or strategies) that you want to know more about, and what are the appropriate comparisons.
  • Identify the important outcomes (health related benefits and harms) in which you are interested, such as improvements in symptoms or problems with diagnosis.

Importance of Suggested Topic
Tell us if you have a target date for answering your question and whether you are under a specific timeline.
Impact of a New Evidence Report
For example: How will an evidence report help improve practice? Is it unclear what the most beneficial treatments are? Is there an evidence gap? Is there variation in current practice? Is there a difference between current practice and recent studies? Is it unclear how to implement the health care program or how to best deliver the service?
For example: Are you developing a guideline or policy or implementing a new practice? Explain how you or your group will use a new evidence report to inform your decisions and influence practice.
Other Stakeholders Who Could Use a New Evidence Report

The EHC Program appreciates opportunities to collaborate with other organizations that can use or implement evidence report findings, whether through practice guidelines, decision support, education, policies, or new research.

Example types of organizations include: patient advocacy organizations, clinical professional societies, health care organizations, and Federal, State, or local agencies.

Supporting Document
Files must be less than 50 MB.
Allowed file types: pdf doc docx xls xlsx.
Information About You

To help us understand the context of your topic suggestion, it would be helpful to know more about you. The answers you give will not influence the progress of your suggestion.

e.g., patient/consumer, physician, professional society, administrator

(Optional) Your name and contact information

Your personal information will not be displayed on the EHC Program Web site, nor will it influence your suggestion for a new evidence report by the EHC Program. It will only be used to contact you for additional information about your suggestion, if necessary. It is not mandatory that you provide your contact information, but it is often helpful for us to contact the person who submitted the suggestion, when we need help clarifying a research question.