About CERTs
Annual Report Year 6
AHRQ Letter | Steering Committee Letter | Introduction | CERTs Progress | Certs Program Resources | Certs Parnerships and Collaborations | Conclusion | The CERTs Organization | Principles of CERTs Public-Private Partnerships | Peer-Reviewed Publications
Letter from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Dear Colleague:
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is pleased to present this report outlining the activity and progress of the Centers for Education & Research on Therapeutics (CERTs) in their sixth year. AHRQ is the health services research agency of the Federal Government. Since 1999, AHRQ's mission has included sponsoring the CERTs, which were established as national research centers focusing on the safest and most effective ways to use medical therapeutics: drugs, biological products, and medical devices. The CERTs also serve as an educational resource and, through their unique network of partnerships, a catalyst for groups interested in improving the safe and effective use of therapeutics.
People benefit from medical therapeutics throughout their life. Some CERTs projects focus on specific ages, such as assessment of the cost effectiveness of a medicine for premature infants and studies concerning better ways for children with type 1 diabetes to monitor their blood glucose, and in the elderly, surveys of nursing directors to look for ways to prevent hip fractures in nursing home residents through techniques such as dietary supplementation and hip protectors. Other research addresses conditions, such as lupus, HIV, or heart problems, that affect people of many ages. Still other projects apply to all Americans. Examples are investigating the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and collaborating with the Food and Drug Administration on monitoring the safety of drugs on the U.S. market.
Some of the most fascinating CERTs activities involve surveys and other interactions to take the pulse of the clinician community. Do physicians measure the QT interval before they prescribe drugs that can produce an irregular heartbeat? Do providers suggest Vitamin D supplementation for breastfed babies? How did physicians respond to patient requests for antibiotics after the anthrax scare of 2001? Other studies compare people's self-reports with actual administrative records. Investigators found, for instance, that refill records did not support patients' reports that they took medicine as directed by their provider. Other studies look at how the system works in an effort to pinpoint weak links that lead to errors. For example, some of the causes of medication errors are simple basic problems with handwritten prescriptions, such as using inappropriate abbreviations or unclear recording of decimals.
We look forward to more progress from the CERTs in our mutual effort to ensure that medical therapeutics offer the best possible benefit to the American public and even the world.
Sincerely,
—Carolyn M. Clancy, MD
Director