title: Lessons from comparative effectiveness research methods development projects funded under the Recovery Act.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) directed nearly US$29.2 million to comparative effectiveness research (CER) methods development.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To help inform future CER methods investments, we describe the ARRA CER methods projects, identify barriers to this research and discuss the alignment of topics with published methods development priorities.
  
  
  METHODS
  We used several existing resources and held discussions with ARRA CER methods investigators.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Although funded projects explored many identified priority topics, investigators noted that much work remains. For example, given the considerable investments in CER data infrastructure, the methods development field can benefit from additional efforts to educate researchers about the availability of new data sources and about how best to apply methods to match their research questions and data.
authors.affiliation: Mathematica Policy Research, Washington, DC 20002, USA.
authors.forename: Jelena
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zurovac
authors.forename: Dominick
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Esposito
mesh_terms: D057171:American Recovery and Reinvestment Act / Q000191:economics*; D057186:Comparative Effectiveness Research / Q000191:economics* / Q000639:trends; D005380:Financing, Government / Q000191:economics* / Q000639:trends; D005544:Forecasting; D012107:Research Design / Q000639:trends; D012109:Research Support as Topic / Q000191:economics* / Q000639:trends; D014481:United States
keywords: comparative effectiveness research; methods development; recovery act; research methods; research priorities