ArticleThe Milbank quarterly2021
Beyond Causality: Additional Benefits of Randomized Controlled Trials for Improving Health Care Delivery.
Article in The Milbank quarterly, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Dental Program Evaluations: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review.Community dentistry and oral epidemiology · 2025Pooled it
- Recruitment of individuals into a type 2 diabetes prevention program: the relative effectiveness and cost of different recruitment strategies used for the randomised controlled trial testing an Australian Lifestyle Change Program (AUS2PREVENT).Pilot and feasibility studies · 2026Article
- The Dialogic Health Systems Research Framework (DHSRF): A tool for facilitating self-criticality, researcher interactions and knowledge management in Health Systems Research & Policy Studies.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Article
- Can propensity score matching replace randomized controlled trials?World journal of methodology · 2024Review
- Improving Access to High-Value, High-Cost Medicines: The Use of Subscription Models to Treat Hepatitis C Using Direct-Acting Antivirals in the United States.Journal of health politics, policy and law · 2022Article
- Health Economics Research in Cancer Screening: Research Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Directions.Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Monographs · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Policy Points Policymakers at federal and state agencies, health systems, payers, and providers need rigorous evidence for strategies to improve health care delivery and population health. This is all the more urgent now, during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, especially among low-income communities and communities of color. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are known for their ability to produce credible causal impact estimates, which is why they are used to evaluate the safety and efficacy of drugs and, increasingly, to evaluate health care delivery and policy. But RCTs provide other benefits, allowing policymakers and researchers to: 1) design studies to answer the question they want to answer, 2) test theory and mechanisms to help enrich understanding beyond the results of a single study, 3) examine potentially subtle, indirect effects of a program or policy, and 4) collaborate closely to generate policy-relevant findings. Illustrating each of these points with examples of recent RCTs in health care, we demonstrate how policymakers can utilize RCTs to solve pressing challenges.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.