If you read or heard any news today, chances are good that you came across at least one story about research in medicine, pharmacy, public health, or health care policy. You might have learned that the findings point to a groundbreaking medical development, that insurers or public health systems will not cover a particular treatment because of its cost, that one or more investigators behaved unethically, that a particular demographic group will be affected by the results—the list of potential clinical, economic, and even political implications is nearly endless.

And this barrage of information is not going to stop anytime soon. The Affordable Care Act, or PPACA, is introducing a host of innovations to the health care delivery system, many of which are being evaluated for the first time in studies that are being posted in news sources almost daily. Will this research show that PPACA provisions achieved their intended objectives—or that they introduced unintended consequences?

At the heart of all these issues lies an often overlooked question: were the study methods used to assess health care policies and treatments valid and reliable? Even for non-researchers, this question is critically important, because the quality of the medical services that you receive depends on the quality of the evidence used to assess them.

In this blog, we will explore the relationship between health care research methods and the policies and treatments that affect our lives—as citizens, as patients, and sometimes as caregivers to family members with medical needs. But for those of you who either never took or don’t remember your methods and statistics classes in college—and for those who took them but don’t want to remember them—fear not. We’ll keep the content both informative and easy to read, even for non-researchers.

About Kathleen Fairman

Kathleen Fairman, author of Health Care Research Done Right, is a research investigator and author with 25 years of experience in evaluating public and private-sector health care programs. With a passion for encouraging the pursuit of excellence in research, she shares vital insights about why research methods—those seemingly mundane study details that are sometimes overlooked—matter deeply to the welfare of patients served by the health care system. Readers will benefit greatly from her wisdom, grace, and humor—and find that good research methodology can be both practical and fun.