Community Forum Deliberative Methods Demonstration: Evaluating Effectiveness and Eliciting Public Views on Use of Evidence - Executive Summary

Abstract

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Community Forum, initiated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), has as its goal to improve and expand public and stakeholder engagement in AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program. A primary area of focus for the Community Forum is to advance methods for obtaining input from the general public.

The report describes the results of the Deliberative Methods Demonstration, a randomized controlled trial comparing deliberative methods with one another and with a control intervention. The primary aims of the Demonstration were to:

• Inform AHRQ research programs on public views regarding the use of research evidence in health care decisionmaking by obtaining informed public input on questions regarding appropriate and acceptable ways to use evidence that are central to the mission of AHRQ’s research programs.

• Expand the evidence base on public deliberation by evaluating whether public deliberation is an effective and useful way to obtain informed public input for U.S. health care research, as well as identifying a feasible set of choices among deliberative methods.

Keywords: Public deliberation, Public engagement, Citizens' jury, Public opinion, Evidence-based medicine, Comparative effectiveness research, United States

JEL Classification: I18, D70