Pragmatic research is vulnerable to differences in data capture and access to care for different subsets of the population, which, if left unaddressed, can worsen health gaps.

In a new article published online ahead of print in JAMIA, the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory's Trial teams reflect on the challenges encountered by their trials and share the specific strategies they used to increase the generalizability of research results.

“Poor generalizability can occur because detailed information about specific populations is missing, and critically, is missing not at random,” the authors cautioned.

The NIH Collaboratory Trials are implementing approaches designed to ensure inclusion and retention of all populations, and to enable the complete collection of data.

“By improving data capture, access to care, and patient technology support, ePCTs hold the potential to yield insights and estimates pertinent to the entire population, not just a subset of the population,” they wrote.

This work was a collaboration between the Community Health Improvement Core, the EHR Core, and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Core of the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory.