Dr. Anne C. Beal, Deputy Executive Director, to Depart PCORI

PCORI will undergo a change in its senior leadership as we bid farewell to Deputy Executive Director Anne C. Beal, MD, MPH, who has served as our first Chief Officer for Engagement and previously our first Chief Operating Officer (COO). Dr. Beal has been an energetic representative for PCORI and patient-centered comparative effectiveness research across the country and a role model for the PCORI staff. Her stamp will remain with us long after she moves on.

As a pediatrician and public health specialist, Dr. Beal has devoted her career to providing access to high-quality health care. She joined PCORI as its fifth employee and its COO in November 2011. At that time, PCORI was still very much a concept with no permanent offices or support teams. She worked to find office space and hire staff. She also wrote two of the first four funding announcements and oversaw all the early growth of PCORI, including development of our organizational chart, rapid expansion of our staff, and our first awards and contracts processes. She even picked out our carpeting.

Later, she directed our Engagement staff as they engaged a wide range of stakeholders—and spread awareness of the opportunities we offer—through individual meetings, conference presentations, a webinar series, roundtables, and regional workshops. We established the Pipeline to Proposals Program, which helps engage communities around a common healthcare research interest and promotes patient involvement in research.

We also launched the PCORI Ambassador Program to further build community awareness and engagement through informed volunteers. Thanks to her guidance, we are also well on our way to creating an action plan for the dissemination and implementation of our research findings, so that the results get to those who need, and will use, them.

Now, Dr. Beal is taking on a new position as Senior Vice President and Chief Patient Officer with Sanofi S.A., a global healthcare company that develops and delivers therapeutic solutions to prevent and treat diseases. At Sanofi, she will work with various divisions of the firm to create a holistic understanding of patients’ daily experiences and translate patient concerns into novel healthcare delivery solutions.

She will be working from both Sanofi’s Bridgewater, NJ, and Paris, France, offices. We know as she takes on this new role, she will continue to promote PCORI’s work and encourage health research in all sectors to become more patient-centered.

We have benefited greatly from Anne’s expertise, skills, and passion for bringing the patient’s voice into the research enterprise. In her role as Deputy Executive Director, she helped guide PCORI to efficiently carry out its mission as the nation’s largest research institute focused on patient-centered outcomes research. Our strategy for engaging patients in research and the work of PCORI, including the newly launched Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Awards, is one product of her leadership. Under her guidance, PCORI has become a leader in promoting promising practices for patient engagement. Among the activities to support this vision are the PCORI Advisory Panels, including the Advisory Panel on Patient Engagement, and the PCORI merit review process, which includes the patient perspective as PCORI develops its research portfolio.

Anne told me that she is proud of what PCORI has already accomplished: defining a new paradigm for patient engagement and ownership of research. She noted that she sees patient voices reaching more and more healthcare settings.

As we prepare to launch our search for our next Chief Officer for Engagement, we will seek ways to further strengthen the organization and activities of our Engagement program as it works to make health research more relevant to patients and other healthcare stakeholders. We will also look forward to working with Anne in her new role, bringing patient-centeredness forward in the pharmaceutical community and its research.

We hope that you will join us in thanking Anne for her contributions to launching and shaping PCORI and in wishing her well in her new position.