Announcing New Special Engagement Award Funding Opportunities, Evaluating Reporting Tool

To meet this identified need, we will be awarding up to $1.6 million through two new special project funding announcements.

These new special project funding announcements are:

• Engagement Award: Accelerating the Adoption of Tools and Resources
  This provides support for projects that give organizations and community groups the opportunity to scale up or adopt meaningful engagement tools and processes with more communities, stakeholders, and patients with the intent to further build capacity/skills for PCOR/CER.
• Engagement Award: Community Convening Around Patient-Centered Outcomes Research
  This provides funding to organizations and community groups to hold multistakeholder convenings that include patients, researchers, clinicians, purchasers, payers, health system leaders, and other stakeholders. These convenings will have a focus on, and commitment to, supporting collaboration around PCOR/CER.

Engagement Award: Accelerating the Adoption of Tools and Resources

This award category will build on existing work by giving organizations and community groups the opportunity to accelerate the adoption of meaningful engagement tools and resources. The materials used for scale up or adoption that are eligible for support under this announcement include engagement work that has been created or developed under a Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award, a PCORI-funded Research Award, or a PCORI Infrastructure Funding Award, which we’ll call PCORI Awards for simplicity’s sake. 

Award funds will allow organizations and community groups to accelerate or adopt relevant engagement resources from PCORI Awards to new or expanded stakeholders and communities, so that they may be more equipped to be active participants in PCOR/CER. The purpose of this special project funding announcement is to:   

• Accelerate the use of promising engagement resources to equip more stakeholders and communities to participate in PCOR/CER  
• Implement tested engagement approaches, processes, and strategies in a specific community to advance PCOR/CER    
• Evaluate existing engagement tools and resources to demonstrate success and make improvements

Engagement Award: Community Convening around Patient-Centered Outcomes Research

Under this opportunity, we seek to fund organizations and community groups to hold multistakeholder convenings with a central focus and theme that will unify stakeholders, such as geography, health condition, or population. The convenings will have a focus on supporting collaboration around PCOR/CER. Specifically, they will focus on and explore one of the following priorities:

• Transferring knowledge about engagement methods and best practices to wider audiences 
• Sharing information about condition- or population-specific areas in the PCORI-funded research portfolio to solicit feedback and suggestions for future research 
• Identifying studies of interest for dissemination and developing strategies for future targeted dissemination 
• Active dissemination of PCORI-funded research results to targeted end users to support the uptake of evidence 
• Fostering multistakeholder collaborations focused on PCOR/CER by developing partnerships for future engagement in PCOR/CER and/or exploring new opportunities for engagement, knowledge transfer, dissemination, and/or implementation  

The convenings will include a diverse array of community stakeholders who have a connection to, or expertise in, the focus area and PCOR/CER. They will also have integrated multistakeholder leadership teams that will be involved throughout the duration of the project period, from planning the event, participating in the convening, to evaluation and dissemination.

Convenings will produce deliverables that will move collaborators closer to participation in, or dissemination of, PCOR/CER. They’ll develop sustainability plans to advance the goals produced at the convening. Lastly, as a part of the evaluation efforts, they will use the PCORI Engagement Awards Reporting Tool as described below.

PCORI Engagement Awards Evaluation Reporting Tool

PCORI has been looking to collect information about Engagement Awards that can help with evaluation of individual projects as well as our collective portfolio. We’ve produced a reporting tool that seeks to ensure that a standard set of indicators is being reported for Engagement Awards.

Given the difficulty in applying metrics and a standard set of indicators around engagement best practices, we understand that not all projects will have outcomes that fit into each category. We also recognize that some projects may have multiple outcomes within each category. Without being prescriptive, we want to be able to understand and evaluate engagement projects so that we can continue to learn about best practices and innovative ways to ensure that the patient/community/stakeholder voice is represented in the research process.  

The Evaluation Reporting Tool is a first step in consistent evaluation of the PCORI Engagement Award portfolio. This tool should be considered during the application phase of all Engagement Awards, so that some of these questions can be answered during implementation of the award. The tool will be uploaded with the final report of every Engagement Award. However, if an awardee would like to use a different evaluation framework, they are more than welcome to do so.  

The Evaluation Reporting Tool will assess the following outcomes: Reach, Engagement, Adoption, and Implementation. Examples of different measurements and questions to consider when evaluating your project are all included in the template. This is not an exhaustive list of measurement indicators or questions, merely suggestions to help guide applicants through the evaluation process. 

We are interested in evaluating how many people engagement techniques are reaching, and who those populations are. We are curious about how engagement of stakeholders is proposed and sustained throughout the project process. The implementation of Engagement Awards is important as we think about preparing communities, stakeholders, and patients to participate in PCOR/CER. We are hopeful that all aforementioned outcomes will lead to a more robust evaluation of individual projects and the PCORI engagement award portfolio.