Resources for Getting Involved and Involving Others

Get Involved

How To Get Involved in the Effective Health Care Program: A Concise Guide for Stakeholders

This concise guide (PDF, 1.1 MB) highlights opportunities for taking part in the EHC Program. You can find out how to get involved and what you can expect throughout the process. This information is also summarized in the following brochures: Opportunities for Involvement (PDF, 233 kB); Life of a Topic (PDF, 229 kB).

In addition, you can use the following links to:

• Suggest a topic for researchers to study.
• Make comments on the key questions that researchers plan to ask in a study.
• Make comments on the draft reports before the researchers publish them.
• Submit scientific information packets to researchers. These packets provide detailed information related to the specific comparative effectiveness research questions.
• Contact us to suggest research priorities or to volunteer to help researchers refine research ideas, develop a research approach or shape research products and tools.
• Use our research summaries and other materials and recommend them to others
• Share your success stories using EHC Program Research, Products, and Tools.

The AHRQ Evidence-Based Care (EBC) Challenge

The EBC Challenge held from June to October 2012, involved nurse practitioners and physician assistants in integrating AHRQ’s research products in their convenience healthcare practice. Teams competed in translating AHRQ research reports into innovative, provider-friendly resources that can be easily adopted in retail settings. Access the webinar resources to learn more about the EBC Challenge and the winning teams.

Involve Others

Tools

Learning Modules: Engaging Stakeholders in the Effective Health Care Program

This set of four learning modules provides researchers with information and tools for engaging a broad range of stakeholders in the Effective Health Care Program.

The Facilitation Primer: Strategies, Tools and Resources to Get You Started

This introduction (PDF, 463 kB) to meeting facilitation focuses on how to work with diverse stakeholder groups. It includes planning and preparation, and ways to address specific challenges facilitators may face during a meeting.

Table: Engaging Stakeholders to Identify and Prioritize Topics for Future Research

This table (PDF, 133 kB) summarizes recommended activities for researchers who wish to involve stakeholders in efforts to identify and prioritize topics for future research. It can be used as a planning guide or reporting checklist.

Patients and Consumers

Summary: Supporting Patient and Consumer Involvement in Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Workshop

This summary (PDF, 687 kB) of a July 13, 2011 panel presents techniques and resources to identify patient and consumer representatives to contribute to all phases of research; ways to provide support and training to facilitate their involvement throughout the process; and strategies for partnering with patients and consumers in the translation and dissemination of research products.

Webcast: Insights from Patients and Consumers Involved in Research

In this webcast of October 13, 2011, presenters discuss techniques and resources to involve patient and consumer representatives in all phases of research.

Online Course: Understanding Evidence-based Healthcare: A Foundation for Action

This web course is designed to help consumer advocates understand the fundamentals of evidence-based healthcare concepts and skills. Funded by AHRQ, the course was created by United States Cochrane Center as part of a project undertaken by Consumers United for Evidence-based Healthcare (CUE). Registration is free of charge.

Innovative Approaches for Engaging Stakeholders

Summary: Innovations in Stakeholder Engagement Conference

This report (PDF, 473 kB) describes presentations from the October 21, 2011 Innovations in Stakeholder Engagement Conference on topics including ways to use social media such as online communities, and implementing engagement techniques such as grassroots organizing and collaborative research methods.

Webcast: Innovations in Stakeholder Engagement Conference

In this webcast of October 21, 2011, presenters from public and private organizations describe promising technologies, activities, and other innovative approaches they have used to involve patients, consumers, clinicians and communities in their work.

Literature Review: Innovative Methods in Stakeholder Engagement: An Environmental Scan

This literature review (PDF, 524 kB) presents a summary of the state of the art in methods that organizations use to involve stakeholders – patients, consumers, practicing clinicians, payers, and others – in health care research and activities in related fields. Its objective is to identify strategies to enhance stakeholder involvement in AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program and other health care research activities.

Webcast: Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Techniques to Integrate Stakeholder Preferences in Comparative Effectiveness Research

The webcast from August 27, 2012 introduces the conceptual basis for multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and describes how two preference elicitation techniques, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Conjoint Analysis (CA), can be used to incorporate stakeholder preferences in comparative effectiveness research.

Deliberative Methods for Public Engagement

Public deliberation is a distinct approach to public consultation, where participants learn about and engage in reasoned discussion about a complex societal issue, and in doing so give decisionmakers insights into the values and concerns of informed members of the public.

These tools and resources were developed to assist individuals wishing to learn more and to apply deliberative methods for obtaining input on health topics from the general public. For additional information, visit the AHRQ Community Forum page.

Literature Review

This report presents the complete findings from an extensive review of the literature on the use of public deliberation methods on health topics. This review was conducted to inform the Deliberative Methods Demonstration conducted as part of the AHRQ Community Forum project.

• Public Deliberation Methods for Eliciting Public Input on Health Topics: Findings from a Literature Review
• Public Deliberation Methods for Eliciting Public Input on Health Topics: Findings from a Literature Review. Executive Summary

Knowledge Briefs

These Knowledge Briefs describe public deliberation, a distinct consultation method used to obtain considered and informed public input on complex societal issues. They are based on findings from the Literature Review on Public Deliberation Methods for Eliciting Public Input on Health Topics (see item above.)

• Knowledge Brief No. 1: Public Deliberation in Health Care
• Knowledge Brief No. 2: Methods and Measures of Public Deliberation

Deliberative Methods Demonstration

This fact sheet describes AHRQ’s Deliberative Methods Demonstration, a trial comparing deliberative methods with one another and with a control intervention, in order to generate evidence on the effectiveness of deliberation and to obtain public input on questions related to the use of health research findings.

• The AHRQ Community Forum Deliberative Methods Demonstration

Journal Article

This article offers an overview of public deliberation and describes its uses in health care and in health care research.

• Siegel JE, Heeringa JW, Carman KL. Public Deliberation in decisions about health research. Virtual Mentor: American Medical Association Journal of Ethics. 2013 Jan;15(1):56-64. 

Slide Presentation

This presentation, from a December 6, 2011 webinar, discusses the use of deliberative methods to elicit the views of patients, consumers, caregivers, or other members of the community concerning health policy and healthcare issues. Topics include how deliberative methods vary from more traditional methods of obtaining public views, defining features of deliberative methods, and issues that are appropriate for deliberation.

• Using Deliberative Methods to Engage Patients, Consumers, and the Public

Webinar

This “how-to” webinar from April 19, 2012, provides practical guidance for those interested in using deliberative methods for obtaining meaningful public input to inform their work. The webinar covers setting clear goals for a deliberative session, recruitment, design, developing educational materials, facilitation, and synthesizing outputs.

• Using Deliberative Methods to Engage the Public: How to Design and Implement an Effective Deliberative Session