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Neiman Institute Awarded NIH Grant for Musculoskeletal Research

Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute is pleased to announce that it is part of a team that has been awarded a five-year, $3.7 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to establish a Core Center for Clinical Research to promote musculoskeletal clinical research. This new University of Washington (UW)-based effort will be called the Clinical Learning, Effectiveness and Research (CLEAR) Center and will be led by Jeffrey G. Jarvik, MD, MPH, a professor of radiology. The CLEAR Center will catalyze high-quality, multi-institutional collaborations by improving methods for conducting clinical musculoskeletal studies and by providing analysis-ready data for scientific investigators. 

"The UW's CLEAR Center represents an important collaboration between multiple departments, schools, and institutions, all sharing the common goal of promoting new approaches to collecting and analyzing data to address some of the most common and disabling clinical conditions," Jarvik says.
 
As a research partner of the CLEAR Center, the Neiman Institute will make its extensive data holdings available to investigators, most notably the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services 5% research identifiable files, which contain all fee-for-service claims for a 5% national sample of Medicare beneficiaries.

"The UW CLEAR Center provides a tremendous opportunity for musculoskeletal researchers to access data across multiple domains," says Danny R. Hughes, PhD, Neiman Institute senior director for health policy research and a coinvestigator. "The breadth of collaborators in this effort facilitates research in clinical effectiveness, outcomes, and policy that would be difficult to perform independently."

Common musculoskeletal disorders require coordinated effort from care teams linking rehabilitation medicine, radiology, pain medicine, physical therapy, and surgical disciplines. This initiative will support diverse research collaborations with expertise in biostatistics, medical informatics, health services research, and epidemiology with the goal of advancing evidence on effective diagnostic and treatment strategies for musculoskeletal conditions.