Helping address the national research and research capacity needs of Australian chiropractic: introducing the Australian Chiropractic Research Network (ACORN) project.

Jon Adams,Amie Steel,Sungwon Chang,David Sibbritt

doi:10.1186/s12998-015-0057-8

Abstract

Chiropractic is a popular health care choice in Australia and yet major gaps in our empirical understanding of this area of practice remain. Furthermore, while some research excellence exists, a largely uncoordinated approach to research activity and development has in effect led to silos of interest and a lack of strategic ‘big-picture’ planning essential to producing a sustainable research culture and capacity for the profession. This commentary identifies the significance of a number of key features - including a national, coordinated focus, and a rich engagement with the practitioner and patient base amongst others – arguably important to the future development of research and research capacity within Australian chiropractic. The design features and phases of the Australian Chiropractic Research Network (ACORN) project are also outlined. ACORN is one contemporary initiative specifically developed to address chiropractic’s research and research capacity building needs and help grow a broad evidence-base to inform safe, effective patient care.

Highlights

Chiropractic is a popular health care choice in Australia as elsewhere constituting a major component of health care utilisation and attracting reports of good patient satisfaction [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
Chiropractic Practice-Based Research Network (PBRN) work has developed outside Australia [26] and, while not constituting a PBRN, practice-based research has previously been undertaken in Australian chiropractic on a regional level [4,27]
Non-partisan approach is at the very core of the Australian Chiropractic Research Network (ACORN) project which has been designed and is independently led and conducted by a team of senior multi-disciplinary health care researchers and yet inclusive of field-practitioner participation and input to assist in making the project more relevant to frontline practice

Summary

Background

Chiropractic is a popular health care choice in Australia as elsewhere constituting a major component of health care utilisation (estimated to be worth over $3 M in outof-pocket expenses in 2005 [1]) and attracting reports of good patient satisfaction [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Despite emerging research activity and developments within chiropractic in Australia and overseas [11,12,13], major gaps in our empirical understanding of this area of health care practice remain. While some research excellence and emerging evidence exists, a largely uncoordinated approach has in effect led to silos of interest and a lack of strategic ‘big-picture’ planning essential to producing a sustainable research culture for the profession [15]. Following the lead of other health professional groups it is vital that Australian chiropractic invest substantial effort and resources to facilitate a coordinated approach to producing a sustainable culture of research [11,12,15,16,17,18,19]. A failure to significantly invest in research capacity building runs the very real risk of substantially limiting the prospects of the profession and its research base for the foreseeable future [16,17,18,19,20]

Discussion

Conclusion