dsmCERTS

Deep South Musculoskeletal Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics (Kenneth G. Saag, MD, MSc, Director; AHRQ 1U19HS021110)

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) impose a growing societal burden. Although many new therapeutic options are available, questions on effectiveness, efficiency, and equity of care remain unanswered. MSDs exert an especially heavy toll on the elderly and other disadvantaged and underserved subpopulations, including racial/ethnic minorities, children, & persons with co-morbidities. The Deep South Arthritis and Musculoskeletal (dsm) CERTS seeks to:

1)   Improve safety and effectiveness of MSD therapeutics through 4 projects that build on our past work and address the programmatic areas of comparative effectiveness research (CER), tool development, health systems interventions and translating research into practice:

a.  Comparative Effectiveness of NSAIDs vs. Narcotics after Joint Replacement Surgery (w/ FORCE registry & UMass);

b.  A Novel Tool and Multi-Modal Intervention for Improving Osteoporosis Treatment Adherence (w/ Kaiser)

c.   Informed Consent Tools for Pragmatic Clinical Trials in Musculoskeletal Diseases (w/ CMTP & JHU)

d.  Assessing Comparative Effectiveness of Biologics and Communicating Risk in Juvenile and Adult Inflammatory Arthritis (w/ CARRA and Yale)

2)   Educate health care practitioners, patients, caregivers, pavers, and policy makers; and

3)   Develop concept briefs and other nascent research and education ideas into full scale projects and products for dissemination in cooperation with AHRQ, the CERTS Scientific Forum, and our large network of partners.