The Health Legacy Partnership (HELP) was co-founded ten years ago by the Joseph H. Kanter Family Foundation and the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ) to pursue three primary goals:
- To support the development of a national outcomes database that will be used by doctors and patients to determine which treatments work best for specific diseases and conditions based on specific criteria of circumstances.
- To diminish healthcare disparities among the public and reward doctors’ efforts for improving the delivery of quality healthcare to all patients.
- To improve healthcare decision making by giving people useful medical information based on scientific research.
The Joseph H. Kanter Family Foundation
The Joseph H. Kanter Family Foundation is a policy organization that acts as a catalyst and broker to encourage others to undertake outcomes research projects, and it promotes efforts to foster public understanding that better treatment outcomes data will improve quality of care by reducing unnecessary treatments and medical errors.
In addition to helping to establish the Partnership, HELP provided startup funding to launch the Public-Private Sector Collaboration for Public Health, which is working to bolster the public health infrastructure and improve the nation’s preparedness and response to a potential large-scale bioterrorism event. Partners in that endeavor include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and eHealth Initiative (eHI), a non-profit consortium of leading health care organizations whose mission is to drive improvement in the quality, safety and cost-effectiveness of health care through information technology.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is the Nation’s lead Federal agency for research on health quality, costs, outcomes, and patient safety. As the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) health services research arm, its work directly complements the biomedical research mission of its sister agency, the National Institute of Health.
In addition to providing a major source of funding and technical assistance for health service research and research training to leading U.S. universities and institutions, AHRQ works with the public and private sectors to build the knowledge base for what does and does not work in health care and translates this knowledge into everyday practice and policymaking.
In addition to providing a major source of funding and technical assistance for health service research and research training to leading U.S. universities and institutions, AHRQ works with the public and private sectors to build the knowledge base for what does and does not work in health care and translates this knowledge into everyday practice and policymaking.