Last week, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) made available eight new funding opportunities totaling as much as $206 million for patient-centered comparative effectiveness research. You can find all of our PCORI-related posts here, including a primer on PCORI. The current open funding opportunities include:
The Pragmatic Clinical Studies and Large Simple Trials to Evaluate Patient-Centered Outcomes opportunity is PCORI’s first funding opportunity under its new Pragmatic Clinical Studies Initiative, which targets large simple trials that compare two or more interventions in real-world settings. PCORI will award up to $90 million for these projects.
Under its Effectiveness of Transitional Care opportunity, PCORI will award up to $25 million for a single study to explore what types of transitional care services work best at reducing preventable hospital readmissions and improving outcomes among at-risk patients.
An Obesity Treatment Options Set in Primary Care for Underserved Populations opportunity makes available up to $20 million for two clinical trials aimed at identifying the most effective obesity treatments provided in primary care settings for individuals with high-risk socio-economic characteristics.
The Assessment of Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment Options opportunity will award up to $32 million for comparative effectiveness research related to decision-support tools and information for patients and caregivers.
Under the Improving Healthcare Systems opportunity, PCORI will make available up to $16 million to investigate features of health care systems – including insurance plans, physician groups, hospitals and other health care facilities, safety net facilities, and any other entities organized to deliver, arrange, purchase, or coordinate health care services – that optimize patient-centered outcomes and efficiency.
A Communication and Dissemination Research opportunity includes up to $8 million for projects that seek to address gaps in health care-related communications – including those between patients/their caregivers and health care providers both about research results and about information to help make decisions.
An Addressing Disparities opportunity will award up to $8 million for studies that compare interventions to reduce/eliminate health-related disparities.
Finally, the Improving Methods for Conducting Patient-Centered Outcomes Research opportunity will provide up to $17 million to address gaps in methodological research relevant to conducting patient-centered outcomes research.
These investments represent just the beginning of an anticipated $1 billion that PCORI expects to make available over the next two years. Letters of intent are due on March 7th and applications as early as May 6th.