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 http://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of contributors and centers aims to identify all relevant controlled trials for each field, whether published or unpublished, regardless of their country of or
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Contact: Kristen Cole
Kristen_Cole@brown.edu
401-863-7508
Brown University
12-Dec-2002