HSR Investigator a Featured Speaker at NIH Collaboratory Meeting

Research News

September 24, 2024

John C. Fortney, PhD, a Senior Research Career Scientist at HSR's Seattle-Denver Center of Innovation for Veteran-Centered and Value-Driven Care and Corresponding Multiple Principal Investigator of the Virtual Care QUERI program, was a featured speaker at a recent NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory webinar on Rethinking Clinical Trials. The NIH Collaboratory strives to strengthen the nation's capacity to implement cost-effective large-scale research that engages healthcare delivery organizations.

During the webinar, Dr. Fortney discussed a paper he wrote with colleagues, Similarities and Differences Between Pragmatic Trials and Hybrid Effectiveness-Implementation Trials. The paper, which was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, clarifies the similarities and differences of pragmatic and hybrid-implementation trial types and offers recommendations to help investigators choose, label, and operationalize the most appropriate trial type to answer their research question. Proper identification and use of these trial types can aid evaluation of grant applications, scientific interpretation of findings, and resulting policy making.

Dr. Fortney's primary research interest is access to care, especially the delivery of mental health services in rural primary care clinics. He has published a framework for conceptualizing access to care in the digital age and has conducted clinical trials to test the effectiveness of virtual care, as well as implementation trials to test strategies intended to promote the uptake of virtual care technologies by primary care patients and providers.