42 U.S.C. § 300u–1 — Grants and contracts for research programs; authority of Secretary; review of applications; additional functions; periodic public survey

(a) The Secretary can conduct and support, by grant or contract, research on health information and health promotion, preventive health services, and education about using health care appropriately — and can encourage others to support it too. Applications for these grants and contracts must go through peer review. The Secretary must also: (1) give consultation and technical help to people who need it to prepare research proposals or actually do research; (2) figure out the best ways to spread information about personal health behavior, preventive services, and appropriate health-care use, and to apply that information to maintain and improve health and to prevent, reduce, or ease disease; (3) study the environmental, occupational, social, and behavioral factors that affect health, and identify where education and prevention could improve health given those factors; (4) develop (A) ways to measure the cost and effectiveness of health information, promotion, and education activities — including comparing different settings and different types of people running them, (B) ways to reimburse or pay for these activities, and (C) models and standards for running them, including standards for how providers should educate patients about the services provided and the symptoms or diagnoses that led to them; (5) develop a method for assessing the cost and effectiveness of specific medical services and procedures under different conditions of use, including how sensitive and specific screening and diagnostic tests are; and (6) use the methods from paragraph (5) to list and assess preventive health measures and services by cost and effectiveness under different conditions of use — which may include things like blood pressure screening, cholesterol screening and control, smoking cessation, substance abuse programs, cancer screening, dietary counseling, diabetes screening and education, intraocular pressure screening, and stress management. (b) The Secretary must periodically survey the American public's needs, interests, attitudes, knowledge, and behavior about health and health care. The Secretary must factor these survey results — plus similar surveys from national and community health education groups and other organizations — into policy decisions about health information, health promotion, preventive services, and health-care-use education.