This PCORI Funding Announcement (PFA) is intended to promote the targeted implementation and systematic uptake of shared decision making (SDM) in healthcare settings, in line with PCORI’s goal of supporting patients in making informed decisions about their care. For this PFA, PCORI defines an SDM strategy as an intervention or approach that draws on and presents evidence to inform patients of available treatment options and their risks and benefits, and either engages patients in a decision-making process with their clinician or promotes their ability to engage in such a process.

This initiative will support projects that propose active, multi-component approaches to implementing effective shared decision making strategies that address existing barriers and obstacles to uptake and maintenance, so that these interventions are effectively and sustainably integrated into practice. The SDM strategy must have demonstrated effectiveness on patient, caregiver, or healthcare provider decision making using widely accepted metrics; the corresponding implementation approach must have potential for use and scalability beyond the targeted implementation setting. Applicants should assure that the proposed project team draws on sufficient expertise in both SDM and implementation science. Projects must incorporate rigorous evaluation of the implementation of SDM approaches, as well as the impact of the SDM processes in the targeted settings.

Applicant Eligibility: To be eligible for this PFA, applicants may either a) propose to implement a shared decision making (SDM) strategy that was formally tested and demonstrated to be effective in the context of a PCORI-funded research award, or b) propose an implementation project that will incorporate new CER evidence from PCORI-funded research into an existing, tested shared decision making strategy, and then implement the updated shared decision making strategy. Applicants proposing to implement a PCORI-funded SDM strategy must either be the PI of the original PCORI-funded study or be a member of the project team. Applicants proposing to incorporate findings from a PCORI-funded study (or studies) into an existing and effective SDM strategy can search from a list of completed PCORI-funded projects with results, which can be found here.