Filling the Research Pipeline

Researchers aren’t the only ones who have ideas that might form the basis for a research study. When patients, their families, clinicians, or others have questions that they can’t answer with currently available evidence—and they want to help generate a research project to find answers—they can turn to PCORI’s Pipeline to Proposal Awards Initiative to get their idea off the ground.

Within this initiative, PCORI will award up to $5.5 million between now and September 30, 2016. We are posting an announcement today, December 1, 2015, seeking proposals for Tier I Pipeline to Proposal Awards. The deadline* for submitting a letter of inquiry (LOI) is January 20, 2016. Each award will provide up to $15,000 over the course of nine months.

The Pipeline to Proposal Awards Initiative has three tiers of awards to help people not usually involved in research to turn their health concerns into potential research projects. The awards support the development of research ideas or proposals designed by partnerships of patients, caregivers, and other healthcare stakeholders. They aim to build a community of stakeholders ready to work with researchers to lay the foundations for comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) that we or other funders can support. The awards are for creating partnerships, engaging the community, and building capacity for community participation in research, but not for the conduct of research projects. No research is funded by the Pipeline to Proposal Award Initiative.

Tier I awards are open to any individual patient, other healthcare stakeholder, or researcher—or group of patients, stakeholders, or researchers—oriented around a particular health issue or population. They fund the partnership building and skills expansion necessary to develop a patient-centered CER project. During the funded period, Tier I awardees will generate a list of CER ideas that address the health issue of interest to those in the partnership.

Please take a look at our new funding announcement and consider applying or encourage others who have ideas for projects to apply.

* On January 4, 2016,  the Letter of Inquiry deadline was extended to January 20, 2016, from January 18, 2016.