Health policy and outcomes research 2004.

Health policy research and its kin, outcomes research, are primarily aimed at informing policy decision-makers. Although we know of no clear line separating these 2 types of research, an apparent convention is to term research performed specifically for policy decisions and typically reported in nonacademic publications as “health policy research,”1 whereas outcomes research is the more academic counterpart. Outcomes research has been defined as follows: the study of “ . . . the impact of health care on the health outcomes of patients and populations. . . in general, realworld settings. . . (measuring) a wide range of outcomes, including mortality, morbidity, functional status, mental wellbeing, and other aspects of health-related quality of life. . . (and) may entail any in a range of primary data collection methods and synthesis methods that combine data from primary studies.”2 Whatever term one wishes to use, this report focuses on several studies published in peer-review journals in the past year that are of potential importance to the thinking and actions of policy decision-makers. Policy decision-makers can be said—at the risk of oversimplifying—to be driven by 2 dominant questions. The first question is, does a particular problem deserve my attention? The second question is, is there any solution to the problem that is credible, practical, and otherwise politically attractive?