The purpose of this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) is to improve health outcomes for individuals with deafness or communication disorders through effectiveness and health services research in the NIDCD mission areas of hearing, balance, smell, taste, voice, speech and language.
One of the missions of the NIDCD is to improve the health outcomes for individuals with deafness or communication disorders. Scientifically-validated prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation approaches will lead to better personal and public health only if they are translated effectively from the research laboratory into routine practice. Efficacy studies measure how well a treatment or intervention works in a clinical trial or laboratory setting. Following efficacy studies, effectiveness studies further evaluate how an intervention performs in the complex and variable context of real-world practice, in various community, clinical and provider settings, and with a broad and diverse patient population. Substantial fall-off in effect sizes is often seen in the translation from efficacy to effectiveness research, highlighting the importance of this stage of evaluation.
Health services research examines the impact of organization, financing and management of health care services on the delivery, quality, cost, access to and outcomes of such services, including demographic, social, economic, and health system factors as they relate to providing preventive, screening, diagnostic, treatment and rehabilitative services. This NOSI seeks to encourage effectiveness and health services research for improved outcomes in the prevention and treatment of disorders of hearing, balance, smell, taste, voice, speech and language.
NIDCD effectiveness research seeks to measure, evaluate and/or improve patient-centered outcomes following intervention for communication disorders. Effectiveness research seeks to determine to what degree an intervention works in patients/populations in general, real-world settings, such as in diverse populations and diverse provider and clinical practice settings. Research outcomes are usually broader in range than typical patient-oriented research studies and include an expanded assessment of outcomes compared to traditional clinical research metrics. For example, an outcomes study would measure functional status, well-being, quality of life, cost, health care resource use, etc., (as opposed to/or in conjunction with traditional clinical metrics such as measures of language, or speech discrimination in noise). Effectiveness research typically employs broader inclusion criteria and has fewer restrictions for participation than traditional clinical study/clinical trial/efficacy research performed under a tightly controlled research setting. Effectiveness research addresses patient-centered outcomes in practice-relevant environments, focuses on quality of life, patient experience of and satisfaction with health care, and the social and economic consequences of care. It may include evaluation of economic impacts linked to health outcomes, and may be performed at either the patient or population level, or both.
Dissemination and Implementation Research seeks to understand how health information and scientifically based clinical practices are/are not adopted in a variety of settings. This includes research on health promotion and approaches to increase use of evidence-based guidelines by both individuals and health care providers. These studies focus on implementing research findings into practice. Individuals interested in applying for research support in Implementation and Dissemination Research should apply under the NIDCD-participating FOA PAR-19-274 “Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health (R01)”.
There is substantial overlap among the above-mentioned research areas and all require collaborative multidisciplinary investigations. Applicants are encouraged to create collaborative teams which may include clinical experts not only in the traditional NIDCD mission areas, but also in other medical specialties and health care professions as well as experts in sociology, health services, health outcomes, economics, biostatistics, public health, health care financing and organization, survey research, psychometrics, epidemiology, and evaluation.
