The Forum for Collaborative Hiv Research

This report is the next stage of the Forum’s examination of the dissemination and implementation of clinical practice guidelines for HIV disease. The report provides a summary of the methodology, scope, and principles of patient outcomes research; an area of scientific investigation that has much to offer researchers, clinicians, and policy analysts addressing HIV disease. Through this report, we begin to examine how outcomes research can be better applied to examine the effects of new standards of care for HIV disease. In June, 1998, the Forum held a workshop to examine HIV practice guideline dissemination and implementation. The workshop brought experts in information dissemination together with experts in HIV research, care, and education. The result was a series of recommendations to better disseminate HIV treatment information to providers and patients by government, industry, health care delivery, and community. We now turn our attention to the evaluation of implementation efforts and the effects of that implementation on patient outcomes. This report provides the needed background information to begin our analysis. In September, 1999, the Forum will hold a workshop to discuss how this methodology can be applied to HIV disease. The recommendations from that workshop will be published, along with summaries of the speaker presentations.