PCORI Announces $120 Million in Funding for Comparative Effectiveness Research

Are you currently conducting comparative effectiveness research or thinking of undertaking a project? If you are, you'll be interested to know that the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) recently announced it will award $120 million in funding this year for projects that align with its mission of giving patients, their caregivers and physicians the ability to make better-informed health care decisions.

The first four PCORI Funding Announcements (PFAs) involve up to $96 million in funding for projects that correspond to the following National Priorities for Research:

• Assessment of Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment Options: For projects that address critical decisions that patients, their caregivers and clinicians face with too little information.

• Improving Healthcare Systems: For projects that address critical decisions that face health care systems, the patients and caregivers who rely on them, and the clinicians who work within them.

• Communication and Dissemination: For projects that address critical elements in the communication and dissemination process among patients, their caregivers and clinicians.

• Addressing Disparities: For projects that will inform the choice of strategies to eliminate disparities.

A fifth PFA on Accelerating Patient-Centered and Methodological Research, which will offer up to $24 million in funding, will be released during the summer.

AOA President Martin Levine recently urged members of the osteopathic profession to take advantage of this funding opportunity to pursue osteopathically-related or other research. "Osteopathic medicine is, by definition, patient-centered care," he noted, "and we have much to offer in the five domains."