The rapid increase in Latinos in South Carolina that has occurred within the past 15 years is associated with both in-migration and high birth rates. Limited ethnic-specific data and communication barriers between Latinas with limited English proficiency have contributed to difficulties in assessing the provision of recommended routine prenatal HIV screening among this vulnerable population. Th...

The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP) keeps clinical practice guidelines up to date by identifying selected topics on asthma that warrant intensive review based on the level of research activity reflected in the published literature or the level of concern in clinical practice. The NAEPP Expert Panel identified key questions about asthma management and used a systematic r...

BACKGROUND The ability to do online searches for health information has led to concerns that patients find the results confusing and that they often lead to expectations for treatments that have little supportive evidence. At the same time, the science of summarizing research evidence has advanced to the point where it is increasingly possible to quantify treatment tradeoffs and to describe the...

INTRODUCTION Despite widespread availability of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), considerable gaps continue between the care that is recommended ('appropriate care') and the care provided. Problems with current CPGs are commonly cited as barriers to providing 'appropriate care'.Our study aims to develop and test an alternative method to keep CPGs accessible and up to date. This method aims ...

Evidence based medicine is a cornerstone of modern medicine including psychiatry. Treatment practice guidelines are nowadays available for guiding mental health care mainly with a focus on specific disorders. Many important clinical situations or problems beyond treatment, however, are lacking proper guidance. It is in this scope that a European Psychiatry Association (EPA) has developed its ow...

This review article considers implications of psychotherapy research for psychotherapy training. It considers 8 themes that characterize the research literature. The themes involve outcome findings, common factors, empirically supported therapies, patient treatment matches, therapy manuals and practice guidelines, brief therapies, combinations of medication and psychotherapy, and group therapie...

Growth is an important indicator of child health; however, measurements are frequently inaccurate and unreliable. This article reviews the literature on linear growth measurement error and describes methods used to develop and evaluate an evidence-based clinical practice guideline on the measurement of recumbent length and stature of infants, children, and adolescents. Systematic methods were u...

In a medical milieu of extensive research, rapidly proliferating information, and a multitude of potential therapies, there has been an escalating trend toward the development and dissemination of clinical practice guidelines outlining investigative and management protocols for clinical problems. There are substantial benefits to providing educational directives and securing widespread adherenc...

Clinical practice guidelines are one of the foundations of efforts to improve healthcare. In 1999, we authored a paper about methods to develop guidelines. Since it was published, the methods of guideline development have progressed both in terms of methods and necessary procedures and the context for guideline development has changed with the emergence of guideline clearinghouses and large sca...

Adherence to practice guidelines is frequently used as a measure of quality of care. Numerous studies have evaluated physician adherence to hypertension guidelines by prescription data, physician survey data, or medical record review. However, most have methodological limitations that might underestimate physician adherence. Accurate and meaningful characterization of adherence rests on evaluat...