CIDER

Resource Center

Executive Summary for Fiscal Year 2011

Director: Geraldine McGlynn, MEd

The Center for Information Dissemination and Education Resources’ (CIDER) mission is to improve the 

health and care of Veterans by disseminating important findings and information from HSR&D research to 

policymakers, managers, clinicians, and researchers throughout VA and the larger healthcare community 

and to continuously enhance and improve HSR&D's dissemination efforts and effectiveness.

The strategic goals of CIDER are to:

• Expand HSR&D’s capacity to disseminate health services research findings and information in a timely way 

to managers, policymakers, clinicians, and researchers;

• Continuously improve dissemination strategies and activities, incorporating appropriate technologies and 

cost-effectiveness; and

• Serve as a resource for special projects or requests originating from HSR&D, the Office of Research and 

Development (ORD), or from the Office of the Under Secretary for Health, Congress, and others about 

HSR&D studies or products. 

CIDER’s HSR&D dissemination activities include: national meetings/conferences, state-of-the-art (SOTA) 

conferences, primers, newsletters, management e-briefs, publication briefs, HSR&D and R&D websites, 

cyberseminars, and web-based video presentations. CIDER also makes numerous contributions to other VA 

and non-VA publications and products (e.g., journal supplements, VA Research Currents), budget reports, 

and non-VA organizational newsletters (AcademyHealth, SGIM). Each of these activities, events, and 

products is designed to advance HSR&D’s mission to promote effective and efficient strategies and 

innovations that improve the organization and delivery of healthcare to Veterans. 

FY 11 was a productive year for CIDER. We achieved approval for the 2011 HSR&D National Meeting, and 

successfully planned and implemented the Meeting which had over 200 paper and poster presentations and 

21 workshops. We also planned and implemented the 2011 Career Development Conference. These efforts 

included management of the online registration and evaluation processes, design and production of all 

meeting materials, and scheduling of more than 14 concurrent meetings around the National Meeting. 

CIDER staff provided materials, information, and consultation at the HSR&D and QUERI exhibits at the VHA 

Improvement Forum, SGIM meeting, and at the AcademyHealth annual meeting. We managed the 

development of a special journal supplement in the ‘Journal of General Internal Medicine’, as a product of the 

Improving Access to VA Care State of the Art Conference (SOTA). 

In addition, CIDER produced 104 HSR&D Publication Briefs for VHA Senior Leadership; produced and 

distributed 3 issues of HSR&D Pub Briefs — an e-publication disseminated to VHA CO senior leadership, 

Network Directors, and CMOs/QMOs that provides summaries of select HSR&D articles and links to an 

online searchable database of publication briefs by topic. We also collaborated with the HSR&D Resource 

Centers to conduct 41 cyberseminars and 16 QUERI Implementation cyberseminars. In addition, CIDER staff 

coordinated 8 Evidence-Based Synthesis, 6 Timely Topics of Interest, 13 Women’s Health, 2 VINCI, and 1 

CHIR cyberseminars. We continued to offer CEU credits to physicians and nurses for two of the Resource 

Center series. Cyberseminar coordination included training, scheduling, recording, and posting all sessions 
to the web. In order to make improvements to the cyberseminar registration and reporting processes, we 

researched and selected a new vendor to provide a more stable platform for the program and plan to launch 

the new platform next fiscal year. 

CIDER facilitated copyediting of 124 articles for the online journal ‘Implementation Science’ and participated 

in ongoing editorial decision-making for the journal. We held a FORUM Editorial Board meeting and planned 

and published 3 issues of FORUM, HSR&D’s newsletter. We also developed and disseminated 2 issues of 

QUERI eNews, and continued working with the QUERI Coordinating Centers and IRCs to refresh and 

advance the QUERI web presence. 

CIDER also distributed 12 issues of HSR&D eNews, 13 Management eBriefs, 3 issues of HSR&D Research 

Briefs, a newsletter targeted at HSR&D investigators, and posted 6 web briefs on the HSR&D website. Using 

HSR&D final reports, we developed 3 issues of Emerging Evidence. 

We developed HSR&D Impacts which will be published in FY12 and we contributed HSR&D impacts to ORD 

products. We contributed 22 VA Sec Staff Notes about HSR&D work. We provided advice and HSR&D 

planning and input to the ORD Research Week event. We also formatted and posted 15 Evidence-Based 

Synthesis Program reports to the web, in addition to managing and continuously updating general content on 

both the HSR&D and R&D websites. 

CIDER posted 11 short videos to the web and we have 12 more in production to inform and educate 

Veterans and the wider VA community about current HSR&D research and how that research can be of 

value to improve the health and care of Veterans. 

We also have utilized VA’s social media channels to promote HSR&D information and have managed any 

Twitter and FaceBook feedback from Veterans. Total clicks for social media posts in FY11 were 410.

CIDER continued to enhance our electronic mailing list capability, as well as develop other distribution 

strategies.