Growing the Community of PCOR Researchers

PCORI is committed to expanding the community of researchers conducting patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR). It’s important to us that our research efforts include communities and patients from all corners of our country. To accomplish this, our staff and members of our Board of Governors regularly meet with individuals and groups from across the healthcare community to outline our opportunities for funding and other ways to participate in our work.

As a stakeholder-driven organization, such outreach is central to our mission and a critical component of the fifth of our National Priorities for Research, Accelerating Patient-Centered Outcomes Research and Methodological Research. We now are focused on engagement, informing current, new and potential researchers – as well as stakeholders who should be involved in research teams – about our unique patient-centered research agenda and funding requirements. In time, we’ll support training for researchers, patients, and other stakeholders in rigorous PCOR methods. And we’ll foster development of electronic data networks to connect and enable interested researchers and collaborative partners.

PCORI was established on the premise that more and more meaningful involvement in research by the entire healthcare community will produce trusted, reliable, rigorous and relevant answers to the real-word questions patients and other healthcare decision makers face every day.

Among those we want to better involve in research are our nation’s community-based medical schools. Because these institutions tend to be newer and not concentrated around a single major teaching hospital, they often have limited research infrastructure. But the communities they serve, their expertise and the perspectives they offer are important to our work.

As with the broader healthcare community, we want to show them how they can engage in PCORI-funded research. So I’m pleased to be participating in a webinar on this topic hosted by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) on Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, from 3:00-4:30 p.m. ET. I’ll be joined in the webinar by our Director of Contracts Management, Martin Duenas, and AAMC’s Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Ann Bonham.

This special webinar is free and targeted to medical school leaders, research administrators, and potential faculty applicants, but anyone interested can register through the AAMC website. The event password is: pcori.

This is one of dozens of meetings and events this year where PCORI is reaching out to the community to raise awareness of our programs and available funding. If your organization would like to have a PCORI speaker address a future meeting, I invite you to make a request through our website.

We look forward to continuing and expanding our dialogue and collaborative work with you and the entire healthcare community.