PCORI Earmarks $285M for Shared Decision-Making Research

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is offering up $308.5 million in funding, with $285 million of that going towards research to better understand informed stakeholder and patient shared decision-making, the organization has announced.

Particularly, the $285 in funding will explore the different options that will help patients and other stakeholders with informed shared decision-making.

These are the first funding announcements PCORI has made in the new year, and represent an essential issue in a healthcare industry increasingly defined by data.

“For patients, caregivers and clinicians faced with myriad health care options, sound data about which care approaches work best for different people in different circumstances is essential,” Nakela L. Cook, MD, MPH, the executive director for PCORI, said in a press release.

PCORI is also offering up $162 million in funding for studies that align with the organization’s National Priorities for Health. PCORI encouraged funding applicants to propose studies that focus on one of the core topic themes—populations, behavioral health, or health conditions—that impact a large sum of the American public.

There will also be $63 million for health equity and social determinants of health research, PCORI said. These proposals should focus on interventions that address both clinical and SDOH factors influencing maternal health outcomes. PCORI said it is looking for studies that will have equal contributions from the researchers and community health partners or community-based organizations that will bring knowledge of participants’ lived experiences to the study.

PCORI also unveiled funding for three implementation studies that are geared toward shared decision-making. This funding will fuel study into how to implement certain shared decision-making strategies that have already been explored via PCORI-funded research and will help experts understand the practical use of these strategies.

A smaller amount of funding will go toward enhancing engagement with health research. PCORI said this is the natural next step in its work in promoting patient-centered research and will ideally foster more diversity and inclusion in the health research process.

PCORI also announced funding to conduct patient-centered clinical effectiveness research (CER) to improve scientific rigor across research, as well as funding to address adolescent alcohol use and delirium in older adults.

“Guided by our National Priorities for Health, PCORI’s latest funding opportunities build on the organization’s success funding research addressing health care challenges that confront families every day and are designed to generate research that provides patients and other health care decision makers with the information they need to make better-informed choices among their health care options,” said Harv Feldman, MD, MSCE, PCORI’s deputy executive director for Patient-Centered Research Programs. “These diverse opportunities are made possible by the ambitious three-year commitment plan approved by our Board of Governors in December of last year.”