The University of Connecticut’s role in the future of the nation’s health care will expand as it helps determine which treatments doctors will recommend and prescriptions health care plans will cover.
An agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently selected UConn as the home for a new federal center that conducts systemic reviews on a variety of health topics that impact the health care system. The reviews will be used to advise federal and state policymakers, professional organizations and insurance companies.
UConn’s center will be a joint collaboration between its School of Pharmacy and School of Business as well as Hartford Hospital.
Assistant finance professor John Vernon has been tapped as the new center’s health policy chief. Previously, Vernon was senior economic policy advisor to the Office of the Commission at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“It’s a wonderful honor that has been bestowed on the university and it will be enormously beneficial for all the faculty and staff involved,” Vernon said. “It will also be very beneficial financially.”
The center, one of 14 such centers located on college campuses nationwide, will receive up to $1 million annually for the next five years.
The specific research aim of the center has not yet been determined. “There is a broad scope of potential topics that we could work on,” Vernon said. “It’s really a brave new world out there in terms of finding the best and most cost-effective ways to deal with health care and we’re going to be a part of it.”
The focus, Vernon asserted, will primarily be on pharmaceuticals and finding fiscally responsible ways of managing prescriptions for the state and federal government.
“It’s great that the different schools will be able to work together and use their different skill sets to complete the reviews and come up with solutions,” he said.
The goal of establishing these centers is to eliminate some of the conflicting research that has plagued the health care industry and to streamline the review process. “The goal is to provide better answers to these health care questions that are going to be so important in the future,” he explained. “We’re going to try to find ways that allow everyone to get good value for the money they spend on health care.”
UConn Gets Research Center Nod
