A New Concept in Patient-Centered Outcomes Research: The Engagement Officer

We at PCORI are passionate about engaging patients, caregivers, clinicians, payers, healthcare systems, and other stakeholders in the work we do. To help advance research that will answer the health and healthcare questions most important to patients and the broader healthcare community, we rely on these groups for guidance as we shape our portfolio. And we expect the researchers whose work we fund to partner with patients and other stakeholders throughout their studies.

As a learning organization, we continue to explore what kinds of engagement activities work best to foster effective patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR)—and how to encourage, support, and sustain such engagement. In our latest response to that challenge, we have named Kimberly Bailey, MS, as PCORI’s first Engagement Officer. We expect to add additional Engagement Officers to our staff over the coming year.

The Engagement Officer position is new not only to PCORI but also to the world of patient-centered healthcare and research. In that role, Bailey will assist our Engagement and Science programs as they actively manage our portfolio of research projects. She will focus specifically on the engagement of patients and other healthcare stakeholders in each project. The position of Engagement Officer will parallel the familiar position of Program Officer, a staff member of a research funder who oversees scientific aspects of the projects.

The concept of Engagement Officers arose as we worked with our Advisory Panel on Patient Engagement to create the Patient and Family Engagement Rubric, which also relates to the participation of other healthcare stakeholders in research projects. The rubric helps better define the stakeholder engagement we are looking for as we evaluate funding proposals. However, panel members wanted to be sure that the engagement plans outlined in proposals came to fruition during the conduct of funded studies. Engagement Officers will work directly with funded projects to ensure meaningful and consistent engagement throughout the span of a project.

Bridging Science and Engagement

We view the Engagement Officer’s role as a bridge between science and engagement program staff. We believe that engagement, applied from a study’s start to finish, not only advances relevant science but also will help to speed the progression of findings into practice. This is why Bailey will be working closely with researchers, Program Officers, patients, and other stakeholders to integrate our engagement and science activities.

Bailey’s grasp of scientific processes and her solid communication skills, passion for engagement, and keen understanding of patient- and other stakeholder communities make her an excellent choice to fill this unique position. What’s more, she has served as a reviewer evaluating PCORI funding proposals, a reviewer mentor, and a member of both our Advisory Panel on Patient Engagement and the PCORI Evaluation Group.

Before joining PCORI, Bailey was research director and program director for health-system improvement at Families USA, a national nonprofit advocacy organization focused on healthcare quality, affordability, and coverage. She led Families USA's work on quality improvement and payment and delivery reform.

Paths to Better Engagement

We see the Engagement Officer’s role woven through the research continuum. Engagement Officers will help to determine engagement milestones and monitor the engagement activity during a project, including the development of plans for dissemination of study findings. They also will also be available to help projects troubleshoot any engagement challenges that arise and will connect funded projects with one another to collaborate and share difficulties as well as successes.

Looking ahead, we see the Engagement Officers driving a cultural change through their work with our growing research portfolio. They will collect examples and identify patterns of successful engagement. Those successes will go into a best-practice repository, which we plan to share with researchers, patients, caregivers, and other stakeholders. We expect it to become a rich tool not only for PCORI but for other funding organizations involved in patient-centered research. In fact, we suspect that other patient-centered research organizations might soon consider creating their own engagement officers positions.

Please join us in welcoming our first Engagement Officer and the latest chapter in our effort to advance CER that helps patients and those who care for them make better-informed health and healthcare decisions.