Health Literature Analysis and Review
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Meera Viswanathan, Ph.D.
In 1997, RTI International teamed with UNC-Chapel Hill to become an Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) for the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The team includes researchers at RTI, led by Kathleen Lohr, PhD, Distinguished Fellow at RTI, who specialize in numerous health services research fields and health policy. In 2007, the team won a third 5-year contract from AHRQ as an EPC-III, now led by Meera Viswanathan, PhD.
The team includes clinicians and researchers at UNC who provide expertise in medicine, nursing, dentistry, public health, and other health services and social sciences. The evidence-based practice team members analyze scientific literature to produce rigorous systematic reviews on topics related to prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and management of common diseases and clinical conditions. Some systematic reviews concern behavioral topics, such as tobacco use and smoking cessation, and research and policy-related issues, such as community-based participatory research. They conduct "comparative effectiveness reviews" to examine the head-to-head evidence about pharmaceuticals and other interventions, as part of the Effective Health Care program at AHRQ.
EPC staff also carry out methodology studies to make the systematic review process more efficient and more rigorous. This includes work focused on grading the quality of observational studies, rating the strength of bodies of evidence, efficient procedures for updating existing systematic reviews, distinguishing efficacy from effectiveness trials, and contribution to AHRQ's Methods Guide for comparative effectiveness reviews.
Very recent EPC reports and papers cover such topics as:
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Women's health, including management of uterine fibroids, cesarean delivery upon maternal request, perinatal depression, and routine use of episiotomy
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Use of pharmaceuticals for adult depression and for rheumatoid arthritis
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Outcomes and management of eating disorders
"The Evidence-Based Practice Centers program has risen to the challenge of harnessing the research data and making it relevant for decision makers in the health care arena," said Carolyn M. Clancy, MD, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. As Jean Slutsky, PA, MSPH, director of AHRQ's Center for Outcomes and Evidence, has noted: "The RTI-UNC collaboration, which draws on the strengths of each institution, has been very successful. Together, they have helped document the best evidence for a variety of treatments and conditions."
RTI staff have also been involved in developing literature reviews for various other clients, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its Community Preventive Services Task Force, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and The Health Foundation in the United Kingdom on best approaches for health care delivery for major chronic conditions.
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