PCORI is pleased to support the April 2016 Health Affairs theme issue on "Patients' and Consumers' Use Of Evidence." On April 7, during a public briefing, PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, MPH, joined Health Affairs’ Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil to discuss the issue and highlight a number of key articles, including several authored by PCORI awardees.

We are pleased to provide free access to the full versions of the following articles and blogs:

• Understanding An Informed Public’s Views On The Role Of Evidence In Making Health Care Decisions
  Kristin Carman, MA, PhD, Member, PCORI Advisory Panel on Patient Engagement & Vice President, American Institutes for Research
• The Importance Of Integrating Narrative Into Health Care Decision Making
  Daniel Dohan, PhD, Professor, Health Policy and Social Medicine, University of California San Francisco
• Incorporating Patient-Reported Outcomes Into Health Care To Engage Patients And Enhance Care
  Danielle Lavallee, PhD, PharmD, Research Assistant Professor, Division of General Surgery, University of Washington
• Enhancing Shared Decision Making Through Carefully Designed Interventions That Target Patient And Provider Behavior
  Ming Tai-Seale, PhD, MPH, Senior Scientist, Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute
• Reinventing The Wheel Of Medical Evidence: How The Boot Camp Translation Process Is Making Gains
  John Westfall, MD, Professor of Family Medicine and Director of the High Plains Research Network, University of Colorado
• VIEWPOINT: Authentic Engagement Of Patients And Communities Can Transform Research, Practice, And Policy
  Steven Woolf, MD, MPH, Director, Center on Society and Health, Virginia Commonwealth University
• People and Places: Shaping Studies To Meet Patients' Needs
  Tracy Gnadinger, Associate Editor, Health Affairs
• Patient-Centered Outcomes Research: Early Evidence From A Burgeoning Field
  Bara Vaida, independent journalist in Washington, D.C.
• Patient-Driven Research Will Lead To Better Health
  Grayson Norquist, MD, MSPH, Vice-Chair, Emory University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Chief of the Psychiatry Service at Grady Health System, Chair, PCORI Board of Governors, 
• Patients Are The New Partners In Reproductive Health Research
  Michaela Gonzalez, Patient Stakeholder Representative for “Patient-Centered Support for Contraceptive Decision Making”(My Birth Control), a project of the Program in Woman-Centered Contraception at UCSF.

The April 2016 theme issue offers a comprehensive examination of the issues related to engaging patients more fully in decisions about health care delivery, and provides a number of examples of how researchers hope to provide patients and consumers with better evidence to choose among their health care options. During a series of panels with authors whose papers were featured, several PCORI awardees discussed their work on patient engagement, the roles patients and communities play in research, and the shared decision-making processes between patients and their doctors.

The list of speakers and panelists included:

• Joe V. Selby, MD, MPH
  Executive Director, PCORI
• Kristin Carman, MA, PhD
  Member, PCORI Advisory Panel on Patient Engagement & Vice President, American Institutes for Research
• Daniel Dohan, PhD (Project Award)
  Professor, Health Policy and Social Medicine, University of California San Francisco
• Danielle Lavallee, PhD, PharmD (Project Award)
  Research Assistant Professor, Division of General Surgery, University of Washington
• Ming Tai-Seale, PhD, MPH (Project Award)
  Senior Scientist, Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute
• John Westfall, MD (Project Award, Project Award)
  Professor of Family Medicine and Director of the High Plains Research Network, University of Colorado
• Steven Woolf, MD, MPH (Project Award)
  Director, Center on Society and Health, Virginia Commonwealth University

View the full list of speakers. You can catch up on the conversation on Twitter with #patientevidence.

You can find more information about the event here.

News Release: Patients' Use of Evidence Takes Spotlight in PCORI-Supported Theme Issue of Health Affairs