The Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award program, named in honor of the first chair of PCORI’s Board of Governors, is intended to bring more patients, caregivers, clinicians, and other healthcare stakeholders into the research process. The goal is to support projects that will build a community better able to participate in patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) and comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) and serve as channels to disseminate study results. This is central to our mission to fund useful CER that will help patients and those who care for them make better-informed healthcare decisions.

The Engagement Award program supports PCORI’s Engagement Imperative—defined in our Strategic Plan—and provides a platform to increase engagement in research, that is, the meaningful involvement of patients, caregivers, clinicians, and other healthcare stakeholders throughout the research process. 

Learn about Recently Funded Engagement Projects

Engagement Awards: Capacity Building

This award funds projects that build communities prepared to participate in PCOR/CER and serve as channels for disseminating study results. It also focuses on offering organizations and community groups the opportunity to scale up or adopt meaningful engagement tools and resources with more communities, stakeholders, and patients, with the intent to further build capacity/skills for PCOR/CER. 

Engagement Awards: Dissemination Initiative

This award will continue to fund initiatives (not conferences) to disseminate PCORI-funded research evidence and published findings, systematic reviews, and evidence updates targeted directly to patients, clinicians, and others who can use this information to inform healthcare decisions. The emphasis should be on active dissemination strategies, rather than on passive dissemination or material/partnership development for future dissemination.

Engagement Awards: Stakeholder Convening Support

This award provides support to organizations and community groups to hold multi-stakeholder convenings, meetings, and conferences that include a variety of stakeholder groups. The convenings supported under this funding opportunity should be designed with the active involvement of patient and community groups and organizations to bring diverse stakeholders together around a central focus or theme that unifies stakeholders (e.g., geography, health condition, population), explore issues related to PCOR/CER, or communicate PCORI-funded research results to targeted end user audiences. This award was previously known as Engagement Award: Conference Support.

If you are considering applying for an Engagement Award, please be sure to review the awards we have already made to avoid submitting a proposal duplicative of work we are already funding.