CNA Health ACTION II Partnership To Translate Healthcare Research into Practice

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — CNA and its Health ACTION (Accelerating Change and Transformation in Organizations and Networks) Partnership have been awarded the ACTION II indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract from the Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to continue translating healthcare research into practice.

AHRQ’s ACTION program contracts with a select group of teams comprised of partnerships of healthcare researchers and clinical delivery systems. ACTION II, the second phase of the program, is a five-year task order contract focusing on practice-based implementation and dissemination research to help improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare in a wide range of settings. CNA also held an ACTION contract from 2006-2010.

“Winning the ACTION II contract will allow CNA to continue its commitment to conducting in-depth research and analysis to explore not only whether a healthcare intervention works in one setting, but also why it works – or does not work – and how we can put this knowledge into practice in other healthcare settings,” said Dr. R. Mark Gritz, Vice President and Director of CNA’s Health Research and Policy Division.

CNA’s ACTION II Partnership provides a variety of capabilities, experiences, care delivery settings, and patient populations to help the AHRQ ACTION program meet its goals and objectives. Although the Partnership focuses on the mid-Atlantic region, it has members from throughout the U.S. It includes a wide range of healthcare delivery organizations such as hospital systems, university-based health sciences centers, and primary care networks serving urban and rural areas and all of AHRQ’s priority populations. It couples these delivery systems with health services researchers and experts in disseminating both research findings and practical tools to implement them. For a complete list of CNA’s ACTION II Partners, go to http://www.cna.org/CHAP

“To address an issue, we build the best possible multidisciplinary team of analysts – representing relevant social science, clinical, economic, statistics, and communications disciplines – from within our collaborative,” said Dr. Daniel M. Harris, CNA ACTION II Program Director and Associate Director of CNA’s Health Research and Policy Division. “The Partnership has a long history of conducting implementation research and then working at the community level to promote the uptake and dissemination of effective innovations.”