Over the past three years, the Research Insights series, funded through an initial AHRQ large conference grant, has successfully provided a unique forum to identify and examine evidence related to health care costs, financing, and organization and to highlight potentially researchable topics where the evidence base is lacking. Participant evaluations document that these meetings and associated materials have been useful to the policy intermediaries who advise decision makers. For the continuation of the Research Insights series, we place even greater emphasis on innovation through webinar methods of convening and dissemination in an attempt to further broaden our reach to state policymakers. The continuation of this partnership between AcademyHealth and AHRQ will augment their respective efforts to support the creation of rigorous, timely research and disseminate findings to decision makers. Continuation of the Research Insights series seeks to: 1) build upon the sentinel mechanism established during the first three years of the meeting series to identify current and emerging policy issues concerning health care costs, organization, markets and productivity; 2) identify the most current, well-done research on these content areas supported by all major funders of such work; and 3) create opportunities for dialogue among researchers and policymakers about the implications and limitations of relevant existing research findings. We plan to retain and expand these innovative features in the next three years of the Research Insights series. The heart of the Research Insights project will be the one invitational meeting of 30 to 40 participants and one open webinar to be held each year of the grant. Each year's meeting and webinar will be on the same or related topics. We anticipate holding the in-person meetings in February, March or April of each year (2014- 2016) and their associated webinars will follow four to eight weeks later. The established Project Advisory Committee (PAC) will meet in September of each year to identify and prioritize meeting topics based on 1) current policy relevance; 2) availability of relevant evidence from research; and 3) gaps in previous dissemination efforts. Members of the PAC will also advise staff about the agenda, suggested moderator and speakers, and invitations for each meeting. Meeting participants will include federal and state policy intermediaries and leading expert researchers. AHRQ Priority Populations will be given greater emphasis over the next three years through topic selection and targeted research presentations. Each meeting will result in an issue brief, and we will make webinar recordings publicly available through our website. AcademyHealth will continue to evaluate the grant using participant surveys, internet statistics, and feedback from the PAC but will expand our evaluation with a second participant survey sent in conjunction with the issue brief to better measure the impact and outcomes of the meeting and its related materials on participants using methods based on logic models and change theory.
AcademyHealth seeks a Conference Grant to build upon the partnership established with AHRQ through the Research Insights meeting series. The heart of the project will be the one invitational meeting of 30 to 40 policymakers and intermediaries and one open webinar targeting state policymakers in each of the grant's three years. Each session will synthesize evidence on current and emerging policy issues related to the costs, organization and financing of health care, identify important gaps for future research to address, and result in issue briefs, bibliographies of key research, and webinars made available on the web.
