PCORI Board approves $3.8 million to support implementation of findings from PCORI-funded research

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 19, 2019) — The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Board of Governors today approved $3.8 million to fund two projects designed to use shared decision making to disseminate and implement PCORI research findings and to simultaneously study ways of building shared decision making into clinical care. The Board also approved nominations for a new Chair and Co-Chair for PCORI’s Advisory Panel on Clinical Effectiveness and Decision Science.

The newly approved shared decision-making awards, funded through PCORI’s Dissemination and Implementation initiative, are:

• $2.1 million for a Kaiser Permanente project to implement the use of a decision aid for use by primary care physicians and surgeons as well as their patients who are managing their obesity and who are eligible for and considering weight-loss surgery. The project would expand the use of the decision aid in two large health systems in Washington and Pennsylvania.

• $1.7 million for a UCLA project to implement a shared decision making approach for diabetes prevention within two health systems, UCLA Health and Intermountain Health. The project will focus on patients with obesity and higher blood sugars who are diagnosed with prediabetes.

“Shared decision making is a vital component of patient-centered care, and it’s also a channel building patient-centered evidence into an individual’s decision making about their treatment options,” said PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, MPH. “PCORI is dedicated to supporting research that improves the process by which patients, working with their clinicians, choose a treatment approach that works best for them. ‘Works best for them’ means that the decision is based to the greatest extent possible on patient-specific information. That is the kind of evidence PCORI aims to produce. These new awards will help bring this evidence directly to patients, to support them in making choices with their clinicians about their care.”

With these latest awards, PCORI has approved nearly $30 million in projects designed to support the uptake of selected results from comparative effectiveness research it has funded to help patients and those who care for them make better-informed healthcare decisions. More details on all of PCORI’s dissemination and implementation projects are on PCORI’s website.

The Board also approved a new Chair and Co-Chair for PCORI’s Advisory Panel on Clinical Effectiveness and Decision Science. PCORI advisory panels do not serve in an official decision-making capacity but provide input and guidance on PCORI’s research and engagement activities and initiatives. The new panelists and the stakeholder groups they represent are:

• Chair: Cornell Wright, MPA, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (Policy Makers)

• Co-Chair: Lawrence Goldberg, MD, The Joint Commission (Clinicians)

Brief biographies and conflict of interest disclosures for each panelist appear on PCORI’s website.

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The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is an independent nonprofit organization authorized by Congress in 2010. Its mission is to fund research that will provide patients, their caregivers, and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed healthcare decisions. PCORI is committed to continually seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work. More information is available at http://www.pcori.org.