CHEAR For Kids’ Health

The greatest advances in medicine won’t be effective if you don’t have a system of delivery or a way to pay for them. The University of Michigan’s Child Health and Evaluation Research (CHEAR) Unit was created in 1999 to study the organization, financing, and delivery of health care; quality and outcomes; cost and medical effectiveness; physician and patient behavior; and health policy.

The CHEAR Unit is the largest of its kind in the United States. It has the only National Institutes of Health-funded fellowship training program in pediatric health services research. CHEAR also was recently named as the official research arm of the American Board of Pediatrics, conducting all its quality of care and workforce studies. Special relationships have been developed with federal and state agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the State of Michigan, which rely on the unit for high-quality, unbiased research.

“There’s nothing else like this in America,” says Gary L. Freed, M.D., M.P.H., Director, CHEAR, Division of General Pediatrics. Based in the Division of General Pediatrics, the core faculty are from the schools of medicine, public health, social work, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, business and law. Freed says, “It is a real multidisciplinary unit that brings some of the best and brightest minds at this university together on behalf of children. That is what we’re all about.” For more information about CHEAR, call 734-615-0616 or visit www.med.umich.edu/pediatrics/division/general.