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Evidence-Based Resource Center (EB-RC) Information:

The FCER Evidence-Based Resource Center

EB-CRC to Serve Chiropractic Clinicians, Educators and Researchers

EB-RC Receives Grant

Information Technologies Director Hired for EB-RC

More Chiropractic Organizations Financially Support FCER’s New Direction

FCER Leadership Goes on the Road to Highlight Foundation’s New Direction

FCER News Release

For Immediate Release: March 2, 2007

Contact: Robin R. Merrifield

380 Wright Road, Norwalk, IA 50211 USA

Phone: 800-343-0549 or 360-471-7837

Fax: 360-478-0834 • E-mail: FCERedit@aol.com

Evidence-Based Healthcare a Reality:
FCER’s EB-CRC to Serve Chiropractic Clinicians, Educators and Researchers

Norwalk, Iowa— There has been much talk lately about the growing movement towards evidence-based practices in all of healthcare.  The need for chiropractors to develop evidence-based practices is becoming an urgent matter.  It is a movement that FCER embraces and recognizes as a need for the chiropractic profession to be able to compete in the future.  The urgency for evidence-based care does not stop at the individual clinician, but must also flow from the colleges, the researchers, and the various associations and allied organizations within chiropractic. 

Throughout 2006, the trends in healthcare and the wants and needs of the chiropractic profession were evaluated through interviews with leaders in research, academics, and national organizations by FCER through an expert outside of the profession.  The findings from this evaluation were interpreted to guide FCER in adapting to meet the most urgent needs of the entire profession.  It is to aid the practicing chiropractor, college faculty, researchers, and associations—and to bring all together to the discussion—that FCER is creating the Evidence-Based Chiropractic Resource Center (EB-CRC).

Throughout its 63-year history, the role that the Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research (FCER) has filled for the profession evolved to meet chiropractic’s changing needs.  In addition to the funding of research projects, FCER was instrumental in the accreditation of the colleges and the development of chiropractic’s base of qualified researchers.  FCER is now embracing the newest needs in chiropractic and adopting programs which will provide practicing chiropractors, researchers, educators, and associations with the tools necessary to meet the demands of patients, other health care providers, and third party payers.

FCER’s EB-CRC is a continuum of components that provide education, training, and ready access to information in evidence based chiropractic care.  This global access to evidence-based research data will benefit all aspects of chiropractic—patients, the research community, practitioners of chiropractic, and the associations, agencies, regulatory bodies and other stakeholders within and outside the profession.

The EB-CRC is being constructed to accommodate the growing need for accessibility to scientifically acceptable research.  At this time, research efforts and related findings within the chiropractic profession are splintered worldwide.  FCER will be the catalyst that consolidates and streamlines the research database so that all can benefit.  The Intellectual Property of the profession must be uniformly managed as an asset that is available to those that will benefit most—first and foremost, the profession’s patients.

Components of the “virtual” EB-CRC will be:

• A Research Information Center (RIC): A digitized, searchable, global database that serves as a resource to the chiropractic community.

  • This RIC would help target, prioritize, initiate, fund, track and manage chiropractic research.

  • This RIC will rate chiropractic research literature.

  • This RIC will be a resource of information for the practitioner in the field and for the educator in the classroom.

• An Intellectual Property Management Policies and Program:  Intellectual property is a strategic asset, the value of which must be protected. Procedures for protecting and mobilizing content (including contracting methodologies, standards for ownership and retention of intellectual property) are required. There should also be policies related to recognition rights, publishing, copywriting, licensing, etc.

• Chiropractic College/Program Incubation Services: The EB-CRC will consult and collaborate with education and research programs and organizations.  It will assist in the development of grant writing, research and trial design, data reduction and analysis, report writing, capital fund raising, and university collaborations.

• Chiropractic College/Program Faculty Training: The EB-CRC will assist in providing for research education, project and position funding for professionals, career development and mentoring of student projects.

• Chiropractic Clinical Training Program: This program will provide doctors of chiropractic with education and training (information resources, products and computer competencies) necessary to practice evidence-based care. This will include research information, listserves, workshops, therapeutic and outcomes support, and communication bridges across practitioner segments.

• Chiropractic Professional Association Program:   This program would provide information, services and skills to professional associations to assist in the development of evidence-based programs to meet the needs of their constituency of practitioners, patients, and stakeholders. This program will train members on how to access and manage information.  

The EB-CRC is the next logical step in fulfilling FCER’s mission:  To promote the health and wellbeing of humanity by encouraging and supporting research and education relative to the field of chiropractic care, and to provide information needed to document and improve chiropractic healthcare capacity worldwide.  In addition to the continued funding of research pilot studies and research Fellowships, the EBCRC will work to fulfill the dissemination side of the mission.  Without adequate dissemination, the usefulness of research to the profession of chiropractic is stifled. 

Please watch www.fcer.org for more information as it becomes available.  To contact FCER, please call 800-622-6309.

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