Distributed December 12, 2002
For Immediate Release

News Service Contact: Kristen Cole



DHHS funding supports Brown’s designation as U.S. Cochrane Center

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded $2.3 million to Brown University for the establishment of the U.S. Cochrane Center. It is part of the Cochrane Collaboration, a global network with centers in 13 countries that promotes evidence-based healthcare.


PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Brown University recently became the U.S. headquarters for the Cochrane Collaboration, a global network that promotes evidence-based healthcare for the purpose of enabling patients and doctors make informed decisions about treatment and care.

Called the U.S. Cochrane Center, the site at Brown University was established with a five-year, $2.3-million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

The award facilitates the merger of the Cochrane Collaboration in the United States from three regional coordinating centers – The New England Cochrane Center of Boston, The New England Cochrane Center at Providence, and the San Francisco Cochrane Center – into a single center. The new structure will expand the Providence office and maintain the San Francisco and Boston offices as branches.

“Our talented and diverse staff work with a broad range of individuals and groups to contribute to improving the health of people worldwide,” said Kay Dickersin, professor of community health in the Brown Medical School and director of the U.S. Cochrane Center. “We aim to provide the best quality information to those who seek it, whether they are consumers, doctors or other providers, policy-makers or journalists.”

Founded in 1993, the Cochrane Collaboration is made up of thousands of collaborators within a network of 13 centers in countries around the world, including China, South Africa, France, Germany, Italy, Australia and Brazil. A complete list is posted at www.cochrane.org/.

The Cochrane Collaboration was formed to create a body of accessible, quality information related to healthcare and medical treatments in 49 disease-specific fields. The network of contributors and centers aims to identify all relevant controlled trials for each field, whether published or unpublished, regardless of their country of origin or language of publication. Its activities are rooted in several founding principles including promoting collaboration and minimizing duplication of research efforts.

The new federal grant will allow the U.S. Cochrane Center to develop a series of educational and training conferences related to evidence-based healthcare. Dickersin and Suzanne Brodney, a faculty investigator at Brown, will lead center’s expansion. New staff will include a U.S. center coordinator, a consumer coalition coordinator, Web developer and conference planner.

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