cluster randomized trials

November 3, 2017: Dr. Miguel Vazquez Shares Lessons From the Improving Chronic Disease Management with Pieces (ICD-Pieces) Trial

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

In this interview, Dr. Miguel Vazquez gives an update on the first years of the Improving Chronic Disease Management with Pieces (ICD-Pieces) trial. Dr. Vazquez discussed the status of his trial, challenges and surprises, and advice he has for new investigators.

“Try to really learn from others who have done this—even if you are the first one doing your specific trial with your specific questions. It was helpful for us to learn from the other Collaboratory projects; they had already faced some problems, and we were able to anticipate and develop solutions proactively.” – Dr. Miguel Vazquez

Read more from Dr. Vazquez in the full interview (PDF).

October 27, 2017: Dr. Doug Zatzick Shares Lessons From the Trauma Survivors Outcomes and Support (TSOS) Trial

Posted on by Karen Staman

In this interview, Dr. Doug Zatzick gives an update on the first years of the Trauma Survivors Outcomes and Support (TSOS) trial. Dr. Zatzick discussed the status of his trial, challenges and surprises, and advice he has for new investigators.

Dr. Zatzick’s advice: “Embed implementation teams within embedded trials. The bottom line is, go to the sites, do training at the sites and with the team, and take field notes in real time. ”

Read more from Dr. Zatzick in the full interview.

October 20, 2017: Dr. Vincent Mor Shares Lessons From the Pragmatic Trial of Video Education in Nursing Homes (PROVEN) Trial

Posted on by Karen Staman

In this interview, Dr. Vincent Mor gives an update on the first years of the Pragmatic Trial of Video Education in Nursing Homes (PROVEN) project. Dr. Mor discussed the status of his trial, challenges and surprises, and advice he has for new investigators.

Dr. Mor’s advice: “The health care system must agree that the outcome your intervention is seeking to achieve is consistent with their mission. Your outcome goal should be something they care about.”

Read more from Dr. Mor in the full interview.

October 18, 2017: NIH Collaboratory Core Working Group Interviews: Reflections from the Biostatistics and Study Design Core

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

We recently asked Dr. Liz DeLong, Chair of the Biostatistics and Study Design Core, to reflect on the first 5 years of the Core’s work and the challenges ahead. She says the biggest impact of the Core has been working with the individual NIH Collaboratory Trials to provide a sounding board to discuss statistical challenges. Further, Core members have contributed to new knowledge through manuscripts that address key methodological issues related to pragmatic clinical trials. She’s hoping the Core will continue to push the boundaries of statistical methods in the coming years.

“The statisticians on the individual trials have not only developed excellent statistical methods for their own studies, but also contributed substantively to the Core.” Dr. Liz DeLong

Download the interview (PDF).

STOP CRC Trial: Analytic Challenges and Pragmatic Solutions

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

Investigators from the STOP CRC pragmatic trial, an NIH Collaboratory Trial, have recently published an article in the journal eGEMs describing solutions to issues that arose in the trial’s implementation phase. STOP CRC tests a program to improve colorectal cancer screening rates in a collaborative network of Federally Qualified Health Centers by mailing fecal immunochemical testing (FIT) kits to screen-eligible patients at clinics in the intervention arm. Clinics in the control arm provided opportunistic colorectal-cancer screening to patients at clinic visits in Year 1 and implemented the intervention in Year 2. In this cluster-randomized trial, clinics are the unit of analysis, rather than individual patients, with the primary outcome being the proportion of screen-eligible patients at each clinic who complete a FIT.

The team dealt with various challenges that threatened the validity of their primary analysis, one of which related to potential contamination of the primary outcome due to the timing of the intervention rollout: for control participants, the Year 2 intervention actively overlapped with the Year 1 control measurements. The other challenge was due to a lack of synchronization between the measurement and accrual windows. To deal with these issues, the team had to slightly modify the study design in addition to developing a few sensitivity analyses to better estimate the true impact of the intervention.

“While the nature of the challenges we encountered are not unique to pragmatic trials, we believe they are likely to be more common in such trials due to both the types of designs commonly used in such studies and the challenges of implementing system-based interventions within freestanding health clinics.” (Vollmer et al. eGEMs 2015)

The Publish EDM Forum Community publishes eGEMs (generating evidence & methods to improve patient outcomes) and provides free and open access to this methods case study. Readers can access the article here.

Study Design of LIRE Pragmatic Trial Published

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck
Picture of Jerry Jarvik, MD, MPH
Jerry Jarvik, MD, MPH, Principal Investigator, LIRE Trial

Dr. Jerry Jarvik and colleagues have published an article in Contemporary Clinical Trials describing the design of the Lumbar Imaging With Reporting of Epidemiology (LIRE) pragmatic cluster randomized trial. LIRE is one of the NIH Collaboratory’s pragmatic clinical trial, which are intended to help establish proof of concept for pragmatic trial designs.

LIRE is studying the effect of inserting epidemiologic benchmarks for common imaging findings into lumbar spine imaging reports being delivered to primary care physicians. The primary goal is to measure whether the intervention reduces subsequent spine-related tests and treatments. All outcomes are captured passively through the electronic health record. The authors state that if successful, such a low-cost intervention could potentially be applied to diagnostic tests for other conditions. LIRE has a projected sample size of more than 160,000 patients across an estimated >2000 primary care physicians at 4 health systems. Enrollment will continue through 2016.

“LIRE is a pragmatic cluster randomized trial of a minimal-risk intervention that we believe can serve as a model for future pragmatic trials.”
(Jarvik JG, et al. Contemp Clin Trials 2015)

Cluster Randomized Trial Design Featured in JAMA’s Guide to Statistics and Methods Series

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

A new article published this week in JAMA describes the cluster randomized trial design. The article is part of JAMA’s Guide to Statistics and Methods series, which publishes explanations of analytic and methodologic approaches used in current research articles to help clinicians better understand the research.

In “Cluster Randomized Trials: Evaluating Treatments Applied to Groups,” Drs. William J. Meurer and Roger J. Lewis define cluster randomization, describe its advantages and limitations, and provide guidance on interpreting cluster randomized trials. The article discusses aspects of a recent cluster randomized trial, the RESTORE trial, as an example.

In RESTORE, pediatric intensive care units were randomized to assess the effects of a nurse-implemented sedation protocol for children with acute respiratory failure on mechanical ventilation. As Meurer and Lewis point out, “interventions that involve training multidisciplinary health care teams are practically difficult to conduct using individual-level randomization, as health care practitioners cannot easily unlearn a new way of taking care of patients.” Cluster randomized designs are therefore often used for this type of research, and it is important for clinicians to be able to understand and evaluate these studies.

Reference:
Meurer WJ, Lewis RJ. Cluster randomized trials: evaluating treatments applied to groups. JAMA. 2015;313:2068-2069. PMID: 26010636. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.5199.

Groundbreaking Suicide Prevention Trial has Enrolled Initial Patients

Posted on by Karen Staman

March 5, 2015

Dr. Greg Simon and the Suicide Prevention Team have enrolled the first participants in the Pragmatic Trial of Population-Based Programs to Prevent Suicide Attempt. This groundbreaking study was developed by researchers at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, Washington, Health Partners Medical Group in Minnesota, and Kaiser Permanente of Colorado, in collaboration with patients who have experienced suicidal thoughts or survived suicide attempts themselves.

Over 9 million adults in the United States experience suicidal thoughts, and more than 1 million adults attempt suicide each year. However, patients at risk for suicidal behavior are not routinely identified, and successful interventions for depression and suicide are not routinely implemented. New evidence suggests that patients who report frequent thoughts of death or self-harm on a commonly-used depression questionnaire are at higher risk for suicide attempt and death over the following year.

This study aims to address the significant problem of suicide by identifying patients who are at risk for suicidal behavior and testing two suicide prevention strategies. Patients at participating institutions will complete a standard depression severity questionnaire during routine clinical care, and the results will be stored in their electronic health records (EHR). Investigators will use the responses in the EHR to identify at-risk individuals, and once identified, the patients will be randomly assigned to either usual care or to two treatment programs. The first is a collaborative care-management approach; the second is an online skills training program called “Now Matters Now,” which is designed to help people manage painful emotions and stressful situations.

Over the next 5 years, the team plans to enroll 19,500 adult patients. The study is an NIH Collaboratory Trial being overseen by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

Congratulations to Dr. Simon and his team for their achievement!

 

Report from NIH Collaboratory Workshop Examines Ethical and Regulatory Challenges for Pragmatic Cluster Randomized Trials

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

A new article by researchers from the NIH Collaboratory, published online this week in the journal Clinical Trials, explores some of the challenges facing physicians, scientists, and patient groups who are working to develop innovative methods for performing clinical trials. In the article, authors Monique Anderson, MD, Robert Califf, MD, and Jeremy Sugarman, MD, MPH, MA, describe and summarize discussions from a Collaboratory workshop on ethical and regulatory issues relating to pragmatic cluster-randomized trials.

Pragmatic Cluster-Randomized Trials

Many of the clinical trials that evaluate the safety and effectiveness of new therapies do so by assigning individual volunteers to receive either an experimental treatment or a comparator, such as an existing alternative treatment, or a placebo. However, this process can be complex, expensive, and slow to yield results. Further, because these studies often take place in specialized research settings and involve patients who have been carefully screened, there are  concerns that the results gathered from such trials may not be fully applicable to “real-world” patient populations.

For these reasons, some researchers, patients, and patient advocacy groups are interested in exploring different methods for conducting clinical trials, including designs known as pragmatic cluster-randomized trials, or CRTs. In a pragmatic CRT, groups of individuals (such as a clinic, hospital, or even an entire health system) are randomly assigned to receive one of two or more interventions being compared, with a focus on answering questions about therapies in the setting of actual clinical practice—the “pragmatic” part of “pragmatic CRT.”

Pragmatic CRTs have the potential to answer important questions quickly and less expensively, especially in an era in which patient data can be accessed directly from electronic health records. Just as importantly, that knowledge can then be fed back to support a “learning healthcare system” that is constantly improving in its approach to patient care.  However, while cluster-randomized trials are not themselves new, their widespread use in patient-care settings raises a number of potential challenges.

For example: in a typical individually randomized clinical trial, patients are enrolled in a study only after first providing written informed consent. However, in a CRT, the entire hospital may be assigned to provide a given therapy. In such a situation, how should informed consent be handled? How should patients be notified that research is taking place, and that they may be part of it? Will they be able to “opt out” of the research? What will happen to the data collected during their treatment? And what do federal regulations governing clinical trials have to say about this? These are just a few of the questions raised by the use of pragmatic CRTs in patient-care settings.

The NIH Collaboratory Workshop on Pragmatic Cluster-Randomized Trials

The NIH Collaboratory Workshop of Pragmatic CRTs, held in Bethesda, Maryland in July of 2103, convened a panel of experts in clinical trials, research ethics, and regulatory issues to outline the challenges associated with conducting  pragmatic CRTs and to explore ways for better understanding and overcoming them. Over the course of the intensive 1-day workshop, conference participants identified key areas for focused attention. These included issues relating to informed consent, patient privacy, oversight of research activities, insuring the integrity of data gathered during pragmatic CRTs, and special protections for vulnerable patient populations. The article by Anderson and colleagues provides a distillation of discussions that took place at the workshop, as well as noting possible directions for further work.

In the coming months and years, the NIH Collaboratory and its partners, including the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet), plan to build on this workshop experience. Together, they hope to explore these issues in greater detail and propose practical steps for moving forward with innovative clinical research methods, while at the same time maintaining robust protections for patients’ rights and well-being.

Jonathan McCall, MS, and Karen Staman, MS, contributed to this post.

Read the full text of the article here:

Anderson ML, Califf RM, Sugarman J. Ethical and regulatory issues of pragmatic cluster randomized trials in contemporary health systems. Clin Trials 2015 [e-Pub ahead of press].
doi:10.1177/1740774515571140 
For further reading:

Tunis SR, Stryer DB, Clancy CM. Practical clinical trials: Increasing the value of clinical research decision making in clinical and health policy. JAMA 2003;290(12):1624-32. PMID:14506122; doi:10.1001/jama.290.12.1624.

The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute Ethical Issues in Cluster Randomized Trials Wiki.

Special Report: Ethical Oversight of Learning Health Systems. Hastings Center Report 2013;43(s1):S2–S44, Si–Sii.

Sugarman J, Califf RM. Ethics and regulatory complexities for pragmatic clinical trials. JAMA 2014;311(23):2381-2. PMID: 24810723; doi: 10.1001/jama.2014.4164.

LIRE Pragmatic Clinical Trial Begins Randomization

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

One of the NIH Collaboratory’s initial NIH Collaboratory Trial, the Lumbar Image Reporting with Epidemiology (LIRE) study, has begun randomization in early April. The LIRE trial is designed to test whether inserting additional epidemiological information into the lumbar spine imaging reports of patients being treated for lower back pain can help both doctors and patients to better understand and interpret the reports. This in turn could help doctors avoid subjecting patients to unnecessary tests and procedures.

LIRE is a cluster randomized trial, which means that instead of randomizing individual patients, whole clinics (one at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit; one at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, with more to follow) are randomly assigned to provide either the experimental treatment or the control treatment to patients.

Cluster-randomized trials offer a number of advantages, including the avoidance of certain kinds of bias that can effect the outcome of a study, but they also raise special issues that can require careful consideration.

The principal investigator of the LIRE trial is Dr. Jeffrey Jarvik  of the University of Washington. You can read more about the LIRE trial here.