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QUERI Highlights from the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting

The 2018 AcademyHealth Annual Meeting – the largest meeting of health services researchers and policy analysts – was held June 24-26 in Seattle, WA. Many VA HSR&D and QUERI investigators participated in sessions over the course of the meeting. QUERI meeting highlights included the session titled “20 Years of QUERI: From Clinical Implementation to Healthcare System Sustainability.” Chaired by Amy Kilbourne, PhD, MPH, Director of QUERI, this session focused on QUERI’s transformation from a program with 10 disease-specific centers to today’s national network of 40+ centers that target topics critical to effectively implementing evidence-based research in a learning healthcare system environment. Over the past two decades, QUERI’s mission has evolved to support:

• More frontline providers implementing evidence-based practices using quality improvement methods;
• Rigorous evaluations of national programs and policies; and
• Deployment of implementation strategies.

Panelists for this session included Anne Sales, PhD, MSN, RN, Director of Implementing Goals of Long-Term Care QUERI; Allen Gifford, MD, Director of Bridging the Care Continuum QUERI; JoAnn Kirchner, MD, Director of Team-based Behavioral Health QUERI; and George Jackson, PhD, Director of Spreading Healthcare Access, Activities, Research and Knowledge (SHAARK) QUERI. If you missed this session, you may listen to these investigators discuss the history and future of QUERI on the HSR&D podcast web page, which also highlights additional QUERI investigators including Courtney Van Houtven, PhD, who talks about “Evaluating VA’s Caregiver Program,”and Alex Young, MD, who discusses “Peer Coaching and Web-based Interventions to Help Veterans with Serious Mental Illness Better Manage their Weight.”

Additional QUERI researchers presented at the AcademyHealth Meeting on topics such as building a culture of diversity and implementing patient-centered medical homes, as well as factors affecting access to care for low-income and vulnerable Veterans, to name a few.