PBRNews—Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, $300 million was directed to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to support comparative effectiveness research (now known as patient-centered outcomes research). Over the past 12 months, AHRQ has issued multiple Requests for Applications and thousands of applications were submitted, including numerous proposals from Practice-Based Research Networks (PBRNs). The agency recently announced the recipients of the ARRA awards, which will support efforts in many areas, including comparisons of health care interventions in real world settings, data infrastructure, and dissemination and implementation. A complete list of awards by category is available at AHRQ’s Recovery Act Awards page.
The exciting news for primary care PBRNs is that $20.7 million of these grants was awarded to AHRQ networks. Transforming Primary Care Practice awards (ranging from $1 to 3 million) went to a a variety of network’s nationwide, including one to a network consortium led by Oklahoma Physicians Resource/Research Network, including Wisconsin Research and Education Network, Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians Research Network, Mecklenburg Area Partnership for Primary Care Research, Clinicians Enhancing Child Health, and L.A. Net.
In 2000, AHRQ invested $1 million in infrastructure support to 18 PBRNs (average award $75,000). Other small solicitations followed. PBRNs were also supported by grant “set-asides” included in several Requests for Applications to assure that a certain number of networks received awards. In the past few years, PBRNs have competed very successfully on their own at AHRQ despite a shrinking grants funding pool. However the announcement of this large amount of grant funding to PBRNs with ARRA funds represents a high watermark for network research and strong evidence of the increasing maturity of our PBRNs.