The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) awarded a five year contract to the Johns Hopkins Evidence-Based Practice Center (JHU EPC) www.jhsph.edu to help the Center promote evidence-informed decision-making in clinical practice and public health policy.
JHU EPC is able to bring together collaborative interdisciplinary teams with in-depth clinical and methodological expertise to tackle challenging issues in all areas of clinical medicine, public health, and healthcare policy.
JHU EPC was established in 1997 as a charter member of the EPC program supported by AHRQ’s Effective Healthcare program www.effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov. Today there are a total of 13 EPCs. AHRQ will award up to $49 million to each EPC over the next five years on a project-by-project basis.
The JHU EPC produces comprehensive systematic reviews of important medical topics that includes comparisons of medical and/or surgical treatments for specific clinical conditions, comparisons of diagnostic tests for clinical conditions, assessments of strategies for preventing clinical problems, and analyses of alternative approaches to public health problems.
EPC uses interdisciplinary teams to integrate clinical expertise with knowledge on evidence-based methods. This can include meta-analysis, decision analysis, benefit harms analysis, and cost-effectiveness analysis.
The JHU EPC is jointed supported by the Department of Health Policy and Management and the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopki8ns Bloomberg School of Public Health and by the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.