Improving health-related quality of life for people living with disabilities and chronic conditions is the goal of a new center that will train scientists to address access and quality inequities in rehabilitation and long-term services and supports.
The American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living is part of the effort.
The Learning Health systems training to improve Disability and chronic condition care (LeaHD) center at Brown University is being launched with a five-year, $5 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as well as the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, an independent, nonprofit research organization based in Washington, DC.
With chronic conditions affecting more than half of US adults, Linda Resnik, PT, PhD, FAPTA, principal investigators said, efforts to address inequities have never been more important.
“A learning health systems approach offers potential solutions by embedding knowledge and best practices into care delivery, thereby supporting improvement, innovation and equity,” Resnik said in a release.
The goal of learning health systems is for patients to receive higher-quality, safer and more efficient care, and for healthcare delivery organizations to become better places to work. The model engages institutional and clinical practice partners in the generation, adoption and application of evidence-based research.
The effort is a collaboration with the Brown University School of Public Health, the University of Pittsburgh and Boston University, along with nine health system and health organization partners, including AHCA/NCAL. Together the collaborative will identify and develop questions focused on rehabilitation and LTSS for persons with disabilities and chronic conditions.
Research priorities for AHCA/NCAL include evidence-based clinical and functional care approaches for long COVID, efficiency in functional change outcomes and workforce issues affecting care and service delivery in assisted living communities and nursing homes.
“We’re a proud partner of the LeaHD Center and pleased to hear about this multi-year grant to further improve training and research for rehabilitation and long-term care services,” an AHCA/NCAL spokeswoman told McKnight’s Senior Living. “We look forward to working with the center in future research projects related to disability and chronic condition care to best assist in achieving our mutual mission.”
The LeaHD center is expected to prepare clinician and research scientists for independent research careers in patient-centered outcomes research, or PCOR, and clinical effectiveness research, or CER.
CER compares the effectiveness of two or more interventions or healthcare approaches. PCOR compares two or more medical treatments, services or health practices and addresses questions and outcomes important to patients and other healthcare stakeholders.
