Christine Goertz, DC, appointed vice chair of PCORI board

September 24, 2018—The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) is pleased to announce that ACA Senior Scientific Advisor Christine Goertz, DC, PhD, has been appointed by the Comptroller of the United States to a three-year term as vice chair of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Board of Governors.

Goertz has been a member—and the sole chiropractor—on the PCORI board since its establishment in 2010. The board is made up of 21 representatives of the patient, general consumer, clinical, insurance, research, employer, industry, policy and other healthcare sectors. Goertz previously served in several leadership positions within the organization, including chair of PCORI’s Science Oversight and Selection committees.

PCORI was established in 2010 as part of the Affordable Care Act. It funds research to help patients, caregivers, and their health practitioners make evidence-based, patient-centered healthcare decisions. Nondrug treatment for pain is among PCORI’s research priorities.

“In addition to her overall leadership skills, Dr. Goertz brings to the PCORI board a great depth of knowledge regarding patient-centered, comparative effectiveness research methodologies that are necessary to evaluate chiropractic care and other nondrug approaches to pain relief,” said ACA President N. Ray Tuck, Jr., DC. “With the opioid epidemic still taking its toll in the U.S., it’s essential for consumers and health care providers to have reliable information on these approaches when making treatment decisions.”

Besides her work with PCORI, Goertz is the CEO of the Spine Institute for Quality and an adjunct associate at the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Duke University Medical Center. Her 25-year research career has focused on working with multidisciplinary teams to design and implement clinical and health-services research studies designed to increase knowledge about the effectiveness and cost of complementary and integrative healthcare delivery.

Source: acatoday.org