NIH Collaboratory

June 25, 2019: GGC4H Awarded Continuation From Planning to Implementation Phase

Posted on by Karen Staman

The investigators of Guiding Good Choices for Health (GGC4H), an NIH Collaboratory Trial, have received approval to move from the planning phase to the implementation phase of their study. Congratulations to the GGC4H study team for their excellent work!

At the May 2019 NIH Collaboratory Steering Committee meeting, we talked with Drs. Stacy Sterling, Margaret Kuklinski, and Richard Catalano to hear about progress and challenges during the UG3 planning phase. The goal of GGC4H is to test the feasibility and effectiveness of implementing Guiding Good Choices—a universal evidence-based anticipatory guidance curriculum for parents of early adolescents—in 3 large, integrated healthcare systems serving socioeconomically diverse families.

“Guiding Good Choices is a tested and proven intervention in community and school-based settings. We think primary care is an ideal implementation setting because pediatricians have parents’ trust, and the AAP recommends that they offer anticipatory guidance to parents. Community and school settings do not often have the same advantages.” — Rico Catalano, Co-PI of GGC4H

In the UG3 phase, the study team partnered with 5 pediatric primary care clinics in Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Kaiser Permanente Colorado, and Henry Ford Health System, finalized the trial protocol, obtained IRB approval, and presented UG3 and pilot study findings at 2 recent national meetings: the Society for Prevention Research and the National Academy of Medicine Collaborative for Healthy Parenting in Primary Care.

Were there any surprises during the study’s planning phase?

“I’ve been pleased and surprised to see the near universal excitement for Guiding Good Choices across the 3 healthcare systems and in multiple clinics. My previous work has been with adolescents who have already started to develop problems and are clearly at risk. Often when you are engaging those teens and their parents, they are coming from a place of crisis and have a lot of anxiety and worry. With Guiding Good Choices, we’re offering it to all families of young adolescents in the pediatric clinics, and we’re heartened to see pediatricians and parents welcoming this.

“The parents and kids were so enthusiastic and excited in our pilot. It’s been extremely heartening, and I think it bodes well for the reception we’re going to get.” — Stacy Sterling, Co-PI of GGC4H

What is an example of a challenge that you were able to overcome with the help of a Core Working Group?

Our study has two core questions: Will Guiding Good Choices improve adolescent behavioral health when offered in a health care setting? Will parents in a health care setting actually enroll in Guiding Good Choices and to what degree? Our initial study design attended more to the second question, and in doing that, raised problems for the valid assessment of effectiveness. These issues could have prevented us from transitioning to the implementation phase, so we needed a good design for assessing both effectiveness and implementation. Our original plan would have included all adolescents who had well visits, but at some clinics, 25% of teens don’t have them. Our new design, developed with the IRB chair and the Biostatistics and Study Design Core, includes everyone who receives care at the pediatric clinic. Although we may enroll some people who don’t engage with the intervention, this will make the study results more generalizable and valid for both effectiveness and implementation.

What words of advice do you have for investigators conducting their first embedded PCT?

“It’s a really fasted-paced year. I think we have complementary strengths across the leaders at our sites, and that is important. Pay attention to the qualities of your team and how they can help you hit the ground running and eventually help you get across the finish line to the UH3 phase.”  — Margaret Kuklinski, Co-PI of GGC4H

GGC4H is supported within the NIH Collaboratory by a cooperative agreement from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health and receives logistical and technical support from the NIH Collaboratory Coordinating Center. Read more about GGC4H in the Living Textbook, and learn more about the NIH Collaboratory Trials.

June 13, 2019: Experience With Pragmatic Clinical Trials Gains Momentum

Posted on by Karen Staman

At the NIH Collaboratory Steering Committee Meeting in May 2019, participants shared their perspectives on the evolving landscape of embedded pragmatic clinical trials (ePCTs). Three initiatives were presented: the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the NIH-DoD-VA Pain Management Collaboratory, and the HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) Initiative. Although many challenges remain, the conduct of ePCTs is gaining momentum, and the synergy between the initiatives, along with the fellowship they engender, will continue to help pave the way for more embedded pragmatic research in the future.

Dr. Ann Trontell, Associate Director of Clinical Effectiveness and Decision Science at PCORI, shared PCORI’s experience with pragmatic clinical studies. Since 2014, PCORI has awarded $494 million dollars for 43 pragmatic studies that range in size from 425 to 100,000 participants (median, approximately 1700). The studies include 2 observational, 27 individually randomized, and 14 cluster randomized trials in a wide range of therapeutic areas.

Dr. Trontell urged those developing proposals for pragmatic trials to make them fit for purpose, as opposed to emphasizing pragmatism, a theme echoed in the Developing a Compelling Grant Application chapter of the Living Textbook.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Robert Kerns, a director of the NIH-DoD-VA Pain Management Collaboratory, shared progress with pragmatic trials designed to evaluate whether evidence-based nonpharmacological approaches are effective for pain management among US military personnel and veterans.

Modeled after the NIH Collaboratory, the Pain Management Collaboratory is supporting 11 projects through a 2-year planning phase and a 2- to 4-year implementation phase. Subject matter experts at the Pain Management Collaboratory Coordinating Center (PMC3) support the projects by sharing tools, best practices, and resources.

 

Dr. Wendy Weber, Program Officer for the NIH Collaboratory Coordinating Center, introduced the HEAL initiative, which is designed to enhance pain management and improve prevention and treatment strategies for opioid misuse and addiction. The goal of the initiative is to provide scientific solutions to the opioid crisis. It includes a set of large-scale pragmatic trials that will receive logistical and technical support from the NIH Collaboratory Coordinating Center.

 

While experience with ePCTs is growing, many distinct challenges remain. As the conduct of ePCTs gains momentum, there is a rich opportunity to use collective experiences to refine best practices to real-world evidence generation and help solve urgent public health problems.

June 7, 2019: Meeting Materials from the 2019 NIH Collaboratory Steering Committee Meeting

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

The Collaboratory has made available all the presentations from their recent Steering Committee meeting held in Bethesda May 1-2, 2019.

Highlights of Day 1 included updates on the progress and sustainability of the NIH Collaboratory, perspectives on the landscape of embedded PCTs (ePCTs) and the need for real-world evidence, challenges and lessons learned from the UH3 NIH Collaboratory Trials, updates on progress and transition plans from the UG3 NIH Collaboratory Trials, and discussions on data sharing policy and planning. Day 2 featured an intensive workshop hosted by the NIH with the goal of starting discussions on statistical issues with ePCTs.

View or download the meeting materials on the website.

May 16, 2019: NIH Collaboratory Investigators Author Recommendations for Responding to Guideline or Policy Changes That Affect Ongoing Pragmatic Trials

Posted on by Karen Staman

A new perspective article by NIH Collaboratory investigators describes the unique, unexpected challenges researchers face when clinical practice guidelines and policies change during the conduct of a pragmatic clinical trial (PCT). The article was published online this week in Clinical Trials.

The NIH Collaboratory Trials are PCTs that test interventions to address urgent public health problems. They involve hundreds to thousands of participants and generally include usual care as a control arm. During the course of these years-long trials, clinical practice guidelines and policies changed due to new evidence from observational studies, small trials, and shifting expert opinion. Such changes can have profound effects on usual care and, therefore, threaten the ability of the PCTs to address the questions they were designed to answer. Investigators must strike a balance between the primary ethical obligation to protect patients by adhering to new best-practice guidelines and policy and the secondary, yet crucial, obligation to develop high-quality evidence to improve care.

“PCTs are an important means of producing high-quality evidence needed to better inform clinical practice. However, when guidelines or reimbursement policies change during the conduct of a PCT, the ethical obligation to gather information to develop evidence-based practices may conflict with the primary ethical obligation to participants.” — Curtis et al, Clinical Trials, 2019

Based on their aggregate experience with the NIH Collaboratory, the authors provide broad recommendations and strategies for overcoming these challenges, including protecting the well-being of patients; involving stakeholders, health system leaders, and the entity charged with data and safety monitoring; and actively monitoring changes and site-level responses to them. If changes to the standard of care are merited, investigators should provide equal opportunity and support for the recommended changes. Finally, during the design phase, investigators should communicate with the entities charged with creating guidelines to see what is needed and to anticipate possible future changes.

“The ability to appropriately address the tension between modifications to clinical guidelines and the need to generate quality evidence to support those guidelines is a crucial consideration for the fulfilment of a learning health system.” — Curtis et al, Clinical Trials, 2019

May 8, 2019: Dr. Greg Simon Receives National Suicide Prevention Award

Posted on by Karen Staman

At the Lifesavers Gala in New York last night, Dr. Greg Simon received the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP’s) Research Award for his contributions to suicide prevention. Dr. Simon leads the Suicide Prevention Outreach Trial (SPOT), an NIH Collaboratory Trial that builds on previous work demonstrating that patients who answer “yes” to thoughts of self-harm on routinely administered PHQ-9 questionnaires at primary care visits are more likely to attempt suicide. For these high-risk patients, SPOT explores different modes of outreach (care management or online skills training versus usual care) to prevent suicide.

“There’s a conspiracy of silence around suicidal thoughts, because it’s awkward to discuss. So we’ve found that we have to incorporate talking about it into our standard care. Our suicide prevention work is a great example of how research and care keep influencing each other to improve our patients’ health. When research springs from clinicians’ and patients’ questions, ‘learning health systems’ can put results into practice much faster than the oft-cited 17-year lag.” — Dr. Greg Simon, from the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute Press Release

Dr. Simon and his colleagues are also studying how machine-learning models can be used to predict risk of suicide. The models combine the PHQ-9 mental health questionnaire responses with information from electronic health records, including prior suicide attempts and mental health and substance use diagnoses. In a blog post regarding his research (and recent publication) on machine learning, Dr. Simon compares machine learning to warning lights on cars:

Our paper prompted many questions from clinicians and health system leaders about the practical utility of risk predictions:

“Are machine learning algorithms accurate enough to replace clinicians’ judgment?” our clinical partners asked.

“No,” I answered, “but they are accurate enough to direct clinicians’ attention.”

The AFSP also honored four others, including Anderson Cooper, a CNN and 60-minutes correspondent, and Kate Snow, an NBC news correspondent, for their work raising public awareness of suicide prevention.

Read more about what inspired Dr. Simon to study mental health.

April 19, 2019: Trauma Survivors Outcomes & Support (TSOS) Pragmatic Trial: Revisiting Effectiveness & Implementation Aims (Doug Zatzick, MD)

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

Speaker

Doug Zatzick, MD
Professor of Psychiatry
Harborview Medical Center
University of Washington School of Medicine

Topic

Trauma Survivors Outcomes & Support (TSOS) Pragmatic Trial: Revisiting Effectiveness & Implementation Aims

Keywords

Trauma outcomes; NIH Collaboratory Trial; Hybrid study design; Implementation science; Pragmatic clinical trial; Cluster randomization; Stepped-wedge design; Posttraumatic stress disorder; PRECIS-2; Mental health intervention

Key Points

  • The TSOS NIH Collaboratory Trial is a cluster-randomized, stepped-wedge trial conducted at 25 U.S. trauma centers. The intervention involves an electronic health record PTSD screen and a baseline PTSD and comorbidity assessment. TSOS is turned on at each site across 4 “waves.”
  • During the course of this hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial, two domains on PRECIS-2 (Pragmatic-Explanatory Continuum Indicator Summary) were scored as more pragmatic and one domain as more explanatory than at the outset of the study.
  • The study team developed a methodology for assessing TSOS implementation aims. Called RAPICE (Rapid Assessment Procedure Informed Clinical Ethnography), the method yielded findings around recurrent intervention and research staff turnover across sites; observations that some patients do not engage in the intervention; and ways to inform a priori secondary hypotheses that suggest per-protocol modifications to the original intention-to-treat analyses.
  • TSOS will present results at the 2020 summit of the American College of Surgeons with the potential to integrate findings into the College’s regulatory and verification processes.

Discussion Themes

Regarding the need to collect outcome data, there may be an important distinction between two aspects of “pragmatic.” That is, while collecting outcome data makes a trial more expensive (one aspect of pragmatic), it doesn’t necessarily affect relevance or generalizability (another, more important, aspect of pragmatic).

Might there be studies which, by design, are not aiming to be on the outer [more pragmatic] spokes of the PRECIS-2 wheel?

Read more about the TSOS NIH Collaboratory Trial.

Tags

#pctGR, @Collaboratory1, @PRECIS_2

NIH Workshop: Design & Analysis of Embedded Pragmatic Clinical Trials

The NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory is hosting a one-day workshop on the Design & Analysis of Embedded Pragmatic Clinical Trials (ePCTs) on May 2, 2019, in the Lister Hill Auditorium on the NIH Campus.

The workshop will include a series of moderated discussions that focus on issues of measuring trial outcomes from available data sources, potential randomization strategies, specific ePCT design considerations, and unique challenges associated with ePCTs. Panel discussions will utilize case examples from the Collaboratory repertoire and beyond to illustrate how clinical investigators and biostatisticians work to address research questions posed by specific trials.

The Workshop Website provides information on meeting logistics, agenda, and registration. There is also an option to attend the workshop remotely via the NIH Videoconference Center, and those details are also available at the Workshop Website.

April 15, 2019: Registration Now Open for Workshop on the Design & Analysis of Embedded Pragmatic Clinical Trials (ePCT)

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

The NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory is hosting a one-day workshop on the Design & Analysis of Embedded Pragmatic Clinical Trials (ePCTs) on May 2, 2019, in the Lister Hill Auditorium on the NIH Campus.

The workshop will include a series of moderated discussions that focus on issues of measuring trial outcomes from available data sources, potential randomization strategies, specific ePCT design considerations, and unique challenges associated with ePCTs. Panel discussions will utilize case examples from the Collaboratory repertoire and beyond to illustrate how clinical investigators and biostatisticians work to address research questions posed by specific trials.

The Workshop Website provides information on meeting logistics, agenda, and registration. There is also an option to attend the workshop remotely via the NIH Videoconference Center, and those details are also available at the Workshop Website.

April 9, 2019: EMBED Awarded Continuation From Planning to Implementation Phase

Posted on by Karen Staman

The investigators of EMBED, an NIH Collaboratory Trial, have received approval to move from the planning phase to the implementation phase of their study. Congratulations to Dr. Ted Melnick, Dr. Gail D’Onofrio, and the EMBED study team for their excellent work!

“The opioid crisis is taking a devastating toll on Americans, their families, and their communities. The EMBED project leverages the urgency of our nation’s opioid crisis to bring together leaders in human-centered design, clinical informatics, data coordination, emergency medicine, and addiction medicine to provide an integrated, user-friendly solution to emergency clinicians caring for people with opioid addiction.”   —Dr. Edward Melnick, Co-PI of EMBED

EMBED (Pragmatic Trial of User-Centered Clinical Decision Support to Implement Emergency Department-Initiated Buprenorphine for Opioid Use Disorder) is designed to evaluate the effect of computerized clinical decision support on rates of emergency department-initiated buprenorphine/naloxone (BUP), which is a well-established outpatient treatment for people with opioid use disorder. BUP can only be prescribed by appropriately trained physicians. Although patients with opioid use disorder often seek medical care in emergency departments, the practice of initiating BUP in the emergency department is not common.

“Initiating buprenorphine in the emergency department has the potential to improve and save so many lives, but currently adoption rates are close to 0%. We believe that the EMBED intervention will be a crucial part of getting this evidence-based practice into routine emergency care.”   —Dr. Edward Melnick, Co-PI of EMBED

NIH Collaboratory Trials begin with a 1-year, milestone-driven planning phase. Projects become eligible to move to the implementation phase after an administrative review of progress toward scientific milestones and feasibility requirements.

In the planning phase, the EMBED study team developed the clinician decision support tools intended to facilitate the management of people with untreated opioid use disorder who seek care in emergency departments. In the next phase, the team will implement the trial and test the effect of the clinical decision support tool compared to usual care on outcomes in patients with opioid use disorder who seek care in emergency departments.

EMBED was supported within the NIH Collaboratory by a cooperative agreement from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The study also received logistical and technical support from the NIH Collaboratory Coordinating Center through a cooperative agreement from the Office of Strategic Coordination within the Office of the NIH Director.

 

April 1, 2019: Pre-Conference Seminar on Essentials of ePCTs Offered at AcademyHealth’s June 2019 Annual Research Meeting in D.C.

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

The NIH Collaboratory is partnering with AcademyHealth to offer a full-day pre-conference seminar at the 2019 Annual Research Meeting in Washington, D.C. Essentials of Embedded Pragmatic Clinical Trials will provide an introduction to the investigative opportunities for embedded health systems research, along with strategies for conducting clinical trials that provide real-world evidence necessary to inform both practice and policy. Firsthand ePCT experiences and case studies from the NIH Collaboratory will support and illustrate the topics presented. Speakers will include program officers and senior staff from NIH Institutes and Centers and senior investigators from the NIH Collaboratory Trials and Coordinating Center.

Learning objectives include:

  • To clarify the definition of ePCTs and explain their utility.
  • To introduce attendees to the unique characteristics and challenges of designing, conducting, and implementing ePCTs within diverse health care systems.
  • To increase the capacity of health services researchers to address important clinical questions with ePCTs.
Seminar Details & Registration
Saturday, June 1, 2019
8 am to 5 pm
Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Washington, D.C.