New Research Funding Opportunities Eliciting Ways to Improve Patient Care

The Labor Day holiday marks the traditional end of the summer, the start of a new school year, and a return to the full schedules of our professional lives. For those of us at PCORI, it also marks the release of our latest research funding opportunities.

Today, our online application system is again open for business, accepting Letters of Intent for proposals under two new PCORI Funding Announcements (PFAs) that offer up to $34 million in research support, in addition to a PFA for proposals to speed the implementation of evidence produced by previous PCORI-funded studies into practice. That PFA is only open to researchers who have already received PCORI funding.

This is the 21st round of PFAs we’ve released since we began funding patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research projects in 2012. And as in the past, we’re again seeking the research community’s best ideas for studies comparing which care approaches will improve outcomes for people living with a range of conditions that impose a substantial burden on them, their families, and the healthcare system.

While we’re open to considering all strong proposals in this latest funding cycle, our four CER announcements are emphasizing proposals that will address four specific topics: dosing of anticancer agents in adults, genetic sequencing to guide cancer treatment, detection and treatment for peripheral artery disease, and suicide prevention. These are important topics on their own, but we’re calling them out in this round because they were suggested by the clinician  and payer groups that are among the stakeholders we serve. 

We chose those four, through our topic prioritization process, from a list of suggestions for topics we solicited from a broad range of clinician and other stakeholder groups based on the current gaps in  evidence, the burden of the clinical area, and the strength of stakeholder recommendations. I’m excited to see what study ideas the research community will put forward in these areas as we continue to seek their most promising project proposals.

We’re also accepting Letters of Intent for projects that will improve patient-centered outcomes research methods, one of the areas that our authorizing law requires us to address. Again, while all proposals are welcome, for this PFA we’re most interested in projects that will study methods related to ethical and human subject protection issues in pragmatic CER, improving study designs, supporting data research networks, and advancing the use of natural language processing. PCORI will make up to $750,000 available to cover the direct costs of each approved studies. We will accept Letters of Intent for these funding opportunities until October 1.

The third, a limited competition PFA, is open to previous PCORI-funded research awardees and seeks proposals to advance the uptake of their projects’ results into clinical practice. Letters of Intent for this PFA are due September 24.

So, while the closing days of summer may bring an end to beach vacations and casual Fridays, we at PCORI are fully open for business and gearing up for a busy fall.