AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community

The purpose of this manuscript is to describe the comparative effectiveness research (CER) paradigm and its important role in guiding current federal funding of research and examine how this paradigm can be used to guide Asian American mental health research. We will begin with a review of comparative effectiveness research and provide several examples of Asian American studies, which fit into the paradigm. In discussing how we may map the CER onto Asian American mental health research, the problem of differential research infrastructure will be introduced and used to frame our recommendations for future research. We provide some recommendations for using CER in Asian American mental health research by noting the need for multiple approaches due to the problem of differential research infrastructure, and expanding the human capital and data infrastructure. The pros and cons of randomized control trials (RCT) are discussed and an example of a study being planned by the authors is presented to illustrate how to undertake studies on Asian American mental health using the CER paradigm.