Abstract
Multiple chronic conditions (MCC) are one of today’s most pressing healthcare concerns, affecting 25% of all Americans and 75% of older Americans. Clinical care for individuals with MCC is often complex, condition-centric, and poorly coordinated across multiple specialties and healthcare services. There is an urgent need for innovative patient-centered research and intervention development to address the unique needs of the growing population of individuals with MCC. In this commentary, we describe innovative methods and strategies to conduct patient-centered MCC research guided by the goals and objectives in the Department of Health and Human Services MCC Strategic Framework. We describe methods to (1) increase the external validity of trials for individuals with MCC; (2) study MCC epidemiology; (3) engage clinicians, communities, and patients into MCC research; and (4) address health equity to eliminate disparities.
Highlights
Multiple chronic conditions (MCC), defined by the U.S Department of Health andHuman Services (HHS) as “the presence of two or more co-existing chronic conditions that last one year or longer and require ongoing medical attention and/or limit activities of daily living”, represent one of today’s most pressing healthcare concerns
In 2018, the AGING Initiative launched the MCC Scholars program with the goal of growing and sustaining a community of multidisciplinary investigators committed to MCC research
As Electronic health records (EHRs) data structure varies across different providers and systems, data models such as the Virtual Data Warehouse (VDW) allow researchers to write extraction code that can be executed at each member site to yield a standardized dataset
Summary
Human Services (HHS) as “the presence of two or more co-existing chronic conditions that last one year or longer and require ongoing medical attention and/or limit activities of daily living”, represent one of today’s most pressing healthcare concerns. As clinical care for individuals with MCC is often complex, conditioncentric, and poorly coordinated across multiple specialties and healthcare settings, there is an urgent need for multidisciplinary, patient-centered research to redesign care for this burgeoning population. The Advancing Geriatrics Infrastructure and Network Growth (AGING) Initiative was formed in 2014 as an infrastructure network to further team science in MCC research [3]. In 2018, the AGING Initiative launched the MCC Scholars program with the goal of growing and sustaining a community of multidisciplinary investigators committed to MCC research. This manuscript, written in collaboration by the inaugural cohort of MCC Scholars, describes innovative, patient-centered approaches to MCC research. (1) increasing the external validity of trials; (2) MCC epidemiology; (3) increasing clinical, community, and patient-centered health research; and (4) addressing disparities in MCC populations [4]
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