Our efforts to engage patients and stakeholders across the healthcare community, and focus on outcomes of interest to patients and those who care for them, are how we conduct Research Done Differently®. Patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) inherently entails innovation, and innovation inherently entails learning, as experimentation generates evidence that leads to new questions and approaches through a "virtuous cycle" of learning.
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Executive Director, PCORI
Three current PCORI initiatives provide excellent examples of this approach to innovation and iterative learning:
- Learning Health Systems 2.0 (in collaboration with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ])
- Health Systems Implementation Initiative
- Science of Engagement Initiative
These initiatives are all grounded in the lessons we have learned to date and all build on the promise of making progress by doing things differently. They also have the potential for advancing greater integration of research and clinical care—while driving progress toward our National Priorities for Health, especially the priority of achieving health equity.
The Learning Health Systems 2.0 Initiative
This initiative builds on the initial Learning Health Systems (LHS) initiative in partnership with AHRQ, to support researchers—typically based in research organizations with health system partners—to conduct PCOR in learning health systems designated as LHS Centers of Excellence.
The initial LHS program has successfully met its goal of developing a cohort of effective PCOR researchers. Thirty of 82 total scholars have completed their fellowships to date and more than 300 articles have been published based on research conducted through the LHS program, on topics including cancer, COVID-19, health disparities, intellectual and developmental disabilities, mental health, social determinants of health, and substance use disorders. The program has also provided many opportunities for scholars to work with health system leaders to ensure that their research influences patient care and health system operations, in such areas as allergies to various antibiotics and a more individual approach to pain management to reduce overprescribing of opioids.
Evaluation of the program’s first four years has guided this next generation of the program to include an enhanced focus on partnerships across institutions, health equity, and further diversifying the LHS research workforce. Based on input from LHS 1.0 program directors, AHRQ has expanded content on health and healthcare inequities and justice to the training curriculum that guides the LHS scholars’ learning.
Health Systems Implementation Initiative
The Health Systems Implementation Initiative, or HSII, also seeks to leverage health systems as drivers of change in patient care. HSII brings a novel approach to our dissemination and implementation work by providing funding to participating health systems to promote the uptake of PCORI-funded evidence in these care delivery settings. HSII will also include a learning network to allow participating institutions to learn from each other.
HSII has generated tremendous interest within the PCORI community and beyond. We received responses from across the country to our request for proposals and are pleased to see a great deal of diversity among responding health systems, ranging in size from a few hospitals to dozens, and from thousands to millions of unique patients served. Many applicant organizations care for underserved patients and communities or have robust programs to serve these populations. Proposed project leads include health system senior leaders, demonstrating strong buy-in at the highest levels, a key component for an initiative designed to leverage the ability of health systems to successfully effect change.
Science of Engagement
This initiative is an unprecedented effort to build on what we have learned over the past decade from funding research that engages patients and stakeholders throughout the research process. We recognize that engagement is a complex process, and that significant evidence gaps remain in understanding how engagement in research is most effectively conducted.
Through this novel initiative, we seek to bring a new level of rigor to closing these gaps by developing and validating measures to capture important elements of engagement—including structure/context, process, and outcomes—as well as generate evidence on what works most effectively in engaging stakeholders, especially from underserved and underrepresented populations. The funding announcement for this program will open on July 12, 2022.
All three of these initiatives build on PCORI’s strengths—in engagement, dissemination and implementation, innovation, iterative learning, and building partnerships—as we drive steadily toward achieving our National Priorities for Health and our ultimate goal of improving healthcare delivery and health outcomes through funding of comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER). Our ongoing strategic planning process—involving detailed input from across PCORI’s stakeholder community—has made clear the pressing need for bold innovation and continuous learning to advance the integration of CER and clinical care in the service of patients, and has highlighted the unique role PCORI has to play in this effort.
What's Happening at PCORI?
The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute sends weekly emails about opportunities to apply for funding, newly funded research studies and engagement projects, results of our funded research, webinars, and other new information posted on our site.
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