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 Award: Capacity Building

This award funds projects that help communities increase their facility with and ability to participate across all phases of the patient-centered outcomes research and comparative clinical effectiveness research (PCOR/CER) process.

Engagement Award: Dissemination Initiative

This award funds 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 Award: Stakeholder Convening Support

This award funds projects designed by organizations and communities to hold multi-stakeholder convening, meetings and conferences that include a combination of patients, caregivers, researchers, clinicians, purchasers, payers, health system leaders, and/or other stakeholders. These convenings will have a focus on, and commitment to, supporting collaboration around PCOR/CER. This award was previously known as Engagement Award: Conference Support.

Insight Policy Research reviewed, extracted, and analyzed data from Engagement awardees’ interim and final progress reports, which indicate accomplishments, challenges, and successes during the award period. The synthesis of findings, which was conducted between 2017-2020, is outlined in the poster.