AcademyHealth today released Modernizing Federal Health Evidence: A Blueprint, a comprehensive, nonpartisan plan to strengthen the federal systems that produce and use health research, data, and evaluation.
The federal health evidence system affects decisions people encounter every day: which treatments work, whether medicines and medical devices are safe, how quickly public health officials can identify an outbreak, whether hospitals are providing safe care, and whether federal health programs are delivering results for the money they spend. When research, data, or evaluation are disrupted, those decisions become harder to make and harder to evaluate.
"When the evidence system works, nobody notices. People notice when we can't answer basic questions. Does this treatment work? Is it safe? Are we getting what we paid for?" said Aaron Carroll, President and CEO of AcademyHealth. "The federal government built a remarkable health evidence enterprise, and most of it still works. But too many of the pieces that matter most are far easier to break than they should be. This Blueprint looks at the whole system and lays out practical changes that would make it stronger and harder to break."
The Blueprint examines the federal health evidence enterprise as a whole, across major research, data, evaluation, and policy functions at agencies including NIH, CDC, FDA, CMS, AHRQ, NCHS, ASPE, and VA. It offers roughly 75 concrete recommendations for strengthening the system.
Each recommendation is assessed against existing law, identifying what agencies can do under current authority, what requires Congress, and who would need to act.
The recommendations focus on five areas:
Protecting the independence of federal health research
Modernizing the nation’s health data infrastructure
Securing sustainable and accountable funding for evidence generation
Building and sustaining the federal evidence workforce
Strengthening the use of evidence in policy and practice
The Blueprint also distinguishes between changes that can begin under existing administrative authority and those that require congressional action. Recommendations include stronger protections for federal research and data programs, better coordination across agencies, and stronger connections between federally funded evidence and health care decisions.
AcademyHealth is releasing the Blueprint for public review and discussion and is soliciting reactions here. AcademyHealth will update the Blueprint transparently when new information or analysis warrants a change.
“We do not expect everyone to agree with every recommendation, and we do not expect every recommendation to be right on the first try,” Carroll said. “The goal is to make the analysis, recommendations, and legal basis visible so people can examine them, challenge them, and improve them.”
The Blueprint builds on AcademyHealth’s recent work in defense of the federal health evidence system, including efforts that helped restore more than $55 million in stalled federal research funding, convened more than 650 organizations through the Friends of AHRQ coalition, and documented disruptions to federally funded research through the Research Interrupted tracker.
Ultimately, the Blueprint is about making sure the country can answer the health questions that matter to people: Which treatments work? Which drugs and devices are safe? Are public health threats identified in time? Is health care delivering good results? And are public dollars being spent effectively?
Modernizing Federal Health Evidence: A Blueprint is available now through the Blueprint website. The site allows readers to explore the plan in bite-size pieces by agency and section. A full companion report provides detailed agency-by-agency recommendations and supporting analysis. AcademyHealth has also developed one-page summaries and an ongoing Situation Report series to break down key recommendations and issues, and will host a series of Substack Live conversations to discuss the Blueprint and hear from others working on these issues.