Community Description

Health services research is the multidisciplinary field of scientific investigation that studies how social factors, financing systems, organizational structures and processes, health technologies, and personal behaviors affect access to health care, the quality and cost of health care, and ultimately our health and well-being.

The goals of the Health Services Research Community are two-fold:

1. Enhance members understanding of health services research and how it may reinforce members’ individual missions.
2. Provide shared resources for member organizations who are funding in this area.

At the Spring 2018 Members Meeting, the working group met to identify two or three specific activities that would enhance members’ understanding of health services research and how it may reinforce members’ individual missions and/or provide shared resources for member organizations who are funding in this area.  Unfortunately, the group wasn’t able to meet at the Fall 2018 Members Meeting due to the date change.

Action groups were formed to work on the following:

1. Develop case studies of how HSR extends the benefit of biomedical research to provide greater clarity of what HSR is and the role it plays in supporting biomedical research.
2. Provide a compilation of resources including program descriptions, announcements, applications, etc. for members already offering HSR in their grant program or considering adding it.

Plans for 2019 were:

The group will meet at the Spring 2019 Members Meeting. The working title for the session is: How can we use what we learn from patient reported outcomes to inform pre-clinical research and requests for applications? The HSR working group will invite a representative from PCORI to help guide a discussion on the role funders can play in completing the virtuous cycle from bench to bedside to bench again when patient experiences inform discovery research.

The group chairs plan to develop a template for case studies of how HSR extends the benefit of biomedical research (with one or two case studies) and will distribute to the work group for suggestions on 1) how to improve the template and 2) other disease/therapeutic topics to pursue in these case studies.