NCCIH Research Blog

I am pleased to announce five new Pragmatic Clinical Trial (PCT) Demonstration Projects that have been funded within the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory. The Collaboratory is an NIH Common Fund program, which aims to strengthen the Nation’s capacity to implement cost-effective, large-scale studies that engage health care delivery organizations as research partners. The Collaboratory has launched nine full-scale trials thus far, and its projects have studied a variety of health problems in real-world settings where patients are already receiving care. This approach strengthens the relevance of research results to health practice.

NCCIH and the National Institute on Aging (NIA) have been leading Collaboratory efforts since the program was initiated in 2012, and I have previously blogged on its accomplishments since then. The Collaboratory’s major activities include the design and rapid execution of PCT Demonstration Projects. A Collaboratory Coordinating Center at Duke University also maintains a website dissemination of tools and resources to the research community, such as a Knowledge Repository and a Living Textbook.

This new set of PCT projects are supported directly by individual NIH institutes, centers, and offices that are providing PCT oversight:*

• PRIM-ER: A primary palliative care intervention, within the emergency department setting, for older adults with serious, life-limiting conditions. (NCCIH, NIA)
• P4TH: A parental guidance/education program, embedded in pediatric primary care, aimed at helping adolescents make good choices and assessing concerns like substance use, depression, and anxiety. (NCCIH, NIDA, OBSSR, ODP)
• EMBED: An electronic health record tool to assist emergency room clinical decisionmaking regarding the implementation of buprenorphine for opioid use disorder. (NIDA)
• NUDGE: Communication via text messaging and an artificial-intelligence chat technology to improve medication adherence and clinical outcomes in chronic cardiovascular conditions. (NHLBI)
• ACP PEACE: A program of video decision aids for patients and communication training for clinicians, toward improving advance care planning in older patients with advanced cancer. (NIA)

More information, including on the principal investigators and their institutions, is available in the press release.

We look forward to the knowledge to be gained and disseminated, from answers to important clinical questions to insights on best practices for this approach to health care systems research.

---

^{*Abbreviations: NIDA, National Institute on Drug Abuse; OBSSR, NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research; ODP, NIH Office of Disease Prevention; and NHLBI, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.}