In addition to its capabilities for designing and running all types of health services and disparities research studies, NERI offers the following specific services:
- Study quality assessment
- Internal and external validity
- Exposure, confounder, endpoint definitions
- Protocol, case report forms, and informed consent forms development
- Development and validation of survey instruments to measure patient-reported outcomes
- Literature reviews and meta-analysis
- Scientific conference presentations
- Manuscript development and publication
Our approach to health services and disparities research challenges the prevailing notion of a hierarchy of research methods. We recognize that that there is no correct methodological approach. Different research questions necessarily require different research methods. This view allows qualitative research and quantitative methods to work in partnership to provide the best evidence-based research on the causes and consequences of disparities in health.
Health Services and Disparities Research at NERI focuses on the organizational and system level of public health issues in order to understand what contributes to health disparities. Our research goal is to inform guidelines and policies and to rethink inadequate or unfocused organizational structures.
NERI’s Institute for Health Services and Disparities Research builds upon decades of research on the organization and use of health services, while expanding the focus to include health care disparities. NERI has conducted many pioneering factorial experiments concerning physician decision making, which have revealed health care disparities to be largely generated or amplified by patient interactions with the health care system. That is, they are “socially constructed” as a result of doctors’ decision making with certain categories of patient.
Health services and disparities research at NERI relies on our broad multidisciplinary expertise to conduct appropriate observational surveys and experimental studies and analyze the resulting data both quantitatively and qualitatively.