Evidence-based practice is a cornerstone of quality patient care, but how exactly do groups such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) go about reviewing evidence and creating reports to help practitioners apply that evidence effectively in their everyday practice? As it turns out, there’s a lot to know.
ACA member Cynthia Chapman, DC, MPH, is an ORISE research and evaluation fellow in the Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) Division of AHRQ’s Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement (CEPI). She and colleague Angela Carr, DSocSci, MHA, RN, will pull back the curtain in their upcoming Engage 2025 presentation to educate doctors of chiropractic about the rigorous processes that are used to distill evidence into a more applicable format for clinicians.
Look for their program, “Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: Applying Reports into Practice,” at Engage 2025, and register here. Read more from Dr. Chapman about the upcoming presentation below:
Q: How is the topic you are presenting at Engage 2025 relevant to today’s chiropractor?
The Evidence-based Practice Center Division of AHRQ and the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) address topics that are relevant to chiropractors such as chronic pain and fall prevention in community-dwelling older adults.
Q: What makes you an expert in this area?
I am an ORISE research and evaluation fellow with the AHRQ’s Evidence-based Practice Center Division of the Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement. In this capacity, I work to support and analyze the effectiveness and impact of the EPC program and other AHRQ programs.
My colleague Angela Carr is a health scientist administrator supporting the USPSTF and the EPC programs. She oversees stakeholder engagement and serves as a project officer for assigned grants, contracts, and task orders.
Q: What first interested you in this topic? Why did you decide to become more engaged in this area?
The importance of the AHRQ mission attracted me. The mission is to produce evidence to make health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable and affordable. Their goal is also to work with the Department of Health and Human Services’ other partners to ensure that the evidence is understood and used.
Q: Can you provide one or two takeaways from your presentation/topic that Engage 2025 attendees will not want to miss?
Attendees will not want to miss this opportunity to learn how to use evidence in practice.
As a group, we will discuss strategies for implementing evidence from EPC Program and USPSTF evidence-based publications in clinical practice. Attendees will understand what goes into creating a high-quality systematic review.
They will also leave with a better understanding of how AHRQ evidence reviews contribute to achieving the goal of helping consumers, healthcare professionals, and policymakers make informed and evidence-based healthcare decisions.
Q: Being “engaged” in the chiropractic profession is a central theme of ACA Engage, the conference. How long have you presented at Engage or other conferences? What inspired you to start and/or what keeps you coming back to share knowledge with your colleagues in this way?
This will be my first time presenting at Engage. I was inspired by the quality of the past presentations as well as the importance of improving health care.
