Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement (CEPI)

The Acting Director of CEPI is Therese Miller, Dr.P.H.

Specifically, the Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement (CEPI)* conducts and supports research and evidence synthesis on healthcare delivery and improvement; advances decision and communication sciences to facilitate informed treatment and healthcare decisionmaking by patients and their healthcare providers; explores how health information technology can improve clinical decisionmaking and healthcare quality; catalyzes and promotes sustainability of improvements in clinical practice across healthcare settings through research, demonstration projects, and partnership development; and operates the National Center for Excellence in Primary Care Research.

CEPI consists of five divisions:

1. Evidence-based Practice Center Program: Produces evidence syntheses by conducting systematic evidence reviews using robust and rigorous methodologies and advances the methods of evidence synthesis to ensure scientific rigor and unbiased reviews.
2. U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Program: Provides scientific, administrative, and dissemination support for the independent U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, enabling the Task Force to make evidence-based recommendations on clinical preventive services.
3. Division of Healthcare Delivery and Systems Research: Develops data and research to understand healthcare delivery organization and implementation of evidence to improve health system performance.
4. Division of Digital Healthcare Research: Develops and disseminates evidence to inform policy and practice on how health information technology can improve the quality of healthcare.
5. Division of Practice Improvement: Promotes innovative and evidence-based healthcare that advances the science of dissemination and implementation and creates materials to teach healthcare professionals and systems to improve care for their patients.

CEPI is also home to AHRQ’s National Center for Excellence in Primary Care Research (NCEPCR)

AHRQ believes that revitalizing the Nation’s primary care system is foundational to achieving AHRQ’s mission of improving the quality, safety, accessibility, equity, and affordability of healthcare. The Agency’s authorizing legislation requires AHRQ to advance the field of primary care research and to establish a Center for this work.

The National Center for Excellence in Primary Care Research (NCEPCR) is the intellectual home for primary care and primary care researchers across AHRQ. As the locus for the wide array of primary care-related activities within the Agency, the Center provides opportunities for AHRQ scientists to share concepts, ideas, challenges, and emerging solutions. The NCEPCR also is AHRQ’s main point of contact with the primary care community, communicating the evidence AHRQ produces—and how this evidence can be used to improve health and primary healthcare—to researchers, primary care professionals, healthcare decision makers, and patients and families.

*CEPI consolidates and represents a realignment of the functions of two former AHRQ research centers: the Center for Outcomes and Evidence (COE) and the Center for Primary Care, Prevention, and Clinical Partnerships (CP3).