AHRQ’s Clancy Among Key Figures On Comparative Research Committee
Full article reprinted from "The Gray Sheet" - March 23, 2009
The Federal Coordinating Committee on Comparative Effectiveness Research includes Agency for Health Care Research & Quality Administrator Carolyn Clancy and Office of Management & Budget Special Advisor Ezekiel Emanuel.
Clancy is the lone agency head on the committee, and co-chaired the HHS media briefing to announce the panel March 19. AHRQ has been the lead agency in HHS on comparative research methods and analysis, and is specifically authorized to spend $300 million of the fund under the legislation.
Clancy is also the only HHS agency head to survive the transition from the Bush Administration to the Obama Administration. That position may be tenuous; the HHS transition team is understood to have contacted potential replacements already. However, her position on the committee presumably indicates that she will be leading the agency at least through the tight schedule for setting the research priorities for CER.
Emanuel, on the other hand, has a more free-ranging role in the administration, with no explicit portfolio but plenty of influence. His position with the Office of Management & Budget gives him a window into all aspects of health policy - and the fact that his brother Rahm is the chief of staff to Obama lends weight to his positions.
In the period of uncertainty following the withdrawal of Tom Daschle's nomination to head HHS and serve as health care czar in the White House, Emanuel took a leading role in health policy discussions for the administration.
FDA's Goodman Among Other Appointees
FDA's lone representative on the panel is Jesse Goodman, who until recently was director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation & Research. His selection, along with his recent elevation to the acting Chief Medical Officer role, will suggest to FDA watchers that his star may be on the rise in the new administration.
In many ways, Goodman is typical of the profile of most of the coordinating committee members: 15 different agencies are represented, and in virtually every instance the representative is a career civil service official below the level of the agency head.
Apart from Clancy and Emanuel, the only other exception is Neera Tanden, counselor in the Office of the HHS Secretary, and one of a handful of HHS officials appointed by the new administration. Tanden co-hosted the media briefing with Clancy.
Other than AHRQ, the only agency specifically earmarked to receive some of the CER funding is the National Institutes of Health, which was appropriated $400 million. NIH is represented on the panel by National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Director Elizabeth Nabel.
Nabel has been cited as a potential candidate to head all of NIH. If she is indeed the nominee, that would further elevate her role in setting the overall direction of the funding.
An Eye For Subpopulations
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services is represented on the panel by Medical Officer and Senior Advisor Thomas Valuck. At CMS, Valuck played a key role in some of the agency's experiments with pay-for-performance initiatives under Medicare.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is represented by Anne Haddix, who is chief policy officer at the Office of Strategy and Innovation. HHS credits her with "establishing the first set of methodological guidelines for cost-effectiveness analysis of public health interventions" while at the agency.
"We have been very mindful of ensuring that ideas and views of particular subpopulations would be represented," Tanden said, noting members Garth Graham (deputy assistant secretary of the HHS Office of Minority Health); Michael Marge (acting director at the Office of Disability); Deborah Hopson (associate administrator of the HIV/AIDS Bureau in the Health Resources and Services Administration); and Peter Delany (director of the Office of Applied Studies at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration).
"It's very important for people to recognize that ... comparative effectiveness research will address the health care needs of every American," she said.
Acting Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation James Scanlon and David Hunt (chief medical officer in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT Adoption) round out the HHS membership on the committee.
Two other departments are also on the coordinating committee. The Departments of Veterans Affairs will be represented by Chief Research and Development Officer Joel Kupersmith, and the Department of Defense by Michael Kilpatrick, who is director of strategic communications for the military health system.
A Tight Deadline
The 15-member council will assist federal agencies including HHS, VA, DoD and others, to coordinate the research. "The federal coordinating council will be making recommendations to the secretary about investments that can accelerate the research that's done at AHRQ, NIH, VA and elsewhere in the departments," Clancy said.
"So I wouldn't see it as a bright line [separating the various research programs] at all, but one where we're trying to make sure that our investments are complementary and add up to a very coherent package of $1.1 billion."
The council will hold the first of several public "listening sessions" on April 14 for stakeholders to voice input and concerns prior to the July 30 due date to report to Congress the details of how the research money will be spent.
Clancy said details on the timing of the grants and which institutions will be receiving them await further input, but that "in the spirit of the recovery act, we will be working to get the money out and invested as expeditiously as possible."
- Jamie Hammon & Michael McCaughan
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