The following content was issued in a press release from the NIH Collaboratory . The original article can be found here.

October 11, 2017: New grant awarded to Dr. Jeffrey Jarvik and his team of investigators to promote pragmatic musculoskeletal clinical research

Congratulations to Dr. Jeffrey Jarvik and his colleagues at the University of Washington for their recent grant award to establish the Core Center for Clinical Research (CCCR). The initiative will promote pragmatic, multi-institutional clinical research on musculoskeletal conditions, such as the diagnosis and treatment of back pain. The new center—the UW Center for Clinical Learning, Effectiveness And Research (CLEAR)—will investigate the effectiveness of interventions such as imagining tests, physical therapy, opioids, spine injections, and spine surgery, as well as approaches for implementation.  The National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) are funding the 5-year, $3.7 million initiative, which will include pragmatic and comparative effectiveness trials and Core groups, including:

• The Methodology Core, led by Patrick J. Heagerty PhD, Chair of the Department of Biostatistics, and Sean Mooney PhD, Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Chief Research Information Officer
• The Resource Core, led by Janna Friedly MD, Associate Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine, and Danielle Lavallee PharmD PhD, Research Associate Professor of Surgery

Dr. Jarvik is a Professor of Radiology at University of Washington and the Principal Investigator the Collaboratory Demonstration Project, the Lumbar Imaging with Reporting of Epidemiology (LIRE) trial.