The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), a non-profit, non-governmental organization created to help patients, clinicians, purchasers, and policy makers make better informed health decisions, is once again offering its Pipeline to Proposal Awards Initiative. This initiative is aimed at non-traditional PCORI applicants, particularly individuals and groups that have impact-potential ideas, but don’t typically have the opportunity to develop research ideas.

This eligibility definition is exciting, as it means these awards are available to individual patients, stakeholders, and researchers, as well as unofficial groups made up of these individuals. Aimed at community engagement and capacity building at the local, state, and regional level, applicants are asked to propose projects focused on facilitating research proposal submission, research results dissemination, and expanding the number of patients, stakeholders and researchers capable of participating in PCORI research.

At this time, Tier 1 awards of up to $15,000 per applicant are available. Tier 1 awards support the formation of partnerships and the expansion of skills needed to develop a patient-centered comparative effectiveness research (CER) project. The project period is to be no longer than nine months. Mandatory letters of intent (LOI) are due January 18, 2016, with full applications due April 18, 2016. A list of previously funded Tier 1 projects can be found here.