CERTs.About.Annual Reports.Year 6.Steering Committee Letter

The Centers for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs) are honored to present this report to share the results from our sixth year of work. Our contributions to research and education continue to focus on topics that directly enhance health care and improve health for the American people. With more than 250 studies in progress, we continue to fulfill our dual mission of exploring the benefits and risks of medical therapies and informing patients, providers, and policymakers about our findings for their use to improve care.

Although it contains only a brief synopsis of some of our current research and education projects, this snapshot of CERTs progress helps illustrate how medical research can improve everyday health care practice today, while also helping to point the way toward broad and long-term solutions for some of our most vexing challenges ahead. In the pages which follow, you'll learn about CERTs research examining issues ranging from ways to control the increasing incidence of bacterial resistance to antibiotics to approaches which document, predict, and manage the risks of adverse reactions to commonly prescribed medications.

A very special feature of the CERTs is the emphasis on collaboration with academic research institutions, government agencies, managed-care organizations, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, physicians and health care practitioners, and others. These crucial partnerships give the CERTs the ability to tap a broad array of resources in addressing emerging issues related to therapeutics and ensure that our findings address real needs in real time. For instance, our access to some of the state-of the-art linked databases of large managed-care and insuring organizations makes it possible to undertake large population-based observational (epidemiological) studies of issues which matter to you, for example, the relative frequency of conditions or complications arising from prescribed drugs or other treatments. And, at the policy level, we partner with many national professional research and educational organizations to work toward an aligned and effective nationwide effort.

As knowledge about curing or preventing health problems continues to grow, the resources for providing care are often stretched thin. An important part of the CERTs mission is to contribute to the evidence base to help with decisions about the best ways to spend scarce resources. Of course, we're proud of the track record of peer-reviewed publication in the scientific literature; however, beyond publication, we continue to look for effective ways of communicating the information that emerges from CERTs studies and integrating it with other related findings on the same subject. Our goal is that the knowledge uncovered by this research will quickly translate into improved health care for the American people.

Lynn A. Bosco, MD, MPH; Robert M. Califf, MD; Georges Benjamin, MD, FACP; Marc L. Berger, MD; Barbara A. Blakeney, MS, APRN, BC, ACP; Susan N. Gardner, PhD; Harry A. Guess, MD, PhD; James G. Kotsanos, MD, MS; Judith M. Kramer, MD, MS; Richard Platt, MD, MS; Wayne A. Ray, PhD; Kenneth G. Saag, MD, MSc; Marcel E. Salive, MD, MPH; David G. Schulke; Paul J. Seligman, MD, MPH; Scott R. Smith, RPh, PhD; Steven L. Solomon, MD; Brian L. Strom, MD, MPH; Myrl Weinberg, CAE; Raymond L. Woosley, MD, PhD

Chairman's Tribute to Harry Guess, MD, PhD

On January 1, 2006, the CERTs program lost one of its true champions, and I lost a treasured personal and professional friend of 25 years, Harry Guess, MD, PhD. For over 2 years Harry served as a member of the CERTs Steering Committee and as principal investigator for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) CERTs center.

Throughout his career Harry was dedicated to science, learning, teaching, mentoring, and discovery. Having had the joy of teaching and working at his side, I marveled at his enormous mathematical and logical mind (his PhD was in advanced mathematics) and his equal measure of common sense and straight talk. He contributed these attributes generously to the CERTs program, helping the UNC CERT to make unprecedented inroads into the "E" (Education) in CERTs, particularly in terms of the translation of therapeutics into practical systems and incentives for pediatricians to adopt them, e.g., through professional recertification.

He was board certified in pediatrics, public health, and in general preventive medicine, and was recently awarded the Sustained Scientific Excellence Award by the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology, where he dazzled, amused, and charmed us with his acceptance speech. Over his career, he co-authored more than 150 research articles and served on the editorial boards of numerous research journals. Following a distinguished career at Merck, where he embodied the practice of public health in the private sector, he became a tenured professor of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Pediatrics in the School of Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill and the Director of the GlaxoSmithKline Center of Excellence in Pharmacoepidemiology at UNC.

In addition to his work on CERTs, Harry was also the principal investigator of the UNC Primary Research Site in the National Institutes of Health Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) network, part of a large NIH roadmap initiative to study the dynamic assessment of patient-reported chronic disease outcomes.

I know I speak for all of us in expressing how deeply we appreciate the many contributions he made to the scientific community, and specifically to the CERTs program and to our personal lives. How we miss him!

About CERTs

Annual Report Year 6

Letter from the Steering Committee

Chairman's Tribute to Harry Guess, MD, PhD