PCORI-Funded Research Appears in Kaiser Health News and in Nature
PCORI-funded research continues to make news, surfacing in recent feature stories in Kaiser Health News and in the journal Nature.
The Kaiser Health News piece profiles the Bureau of Sages, a group of vulnerable seniors who, with Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award funding, have formed an advisory board to work with researchers to identify what matters to older adults, how to involve them in research, and how to effectively communicate with them.
The Kaiser Health News piece quotes 96-year-old Nancy Weinberg, a Bureau of Sages member who pointed out that researchers often need to adjust the way they speak with older patients. Weinberg “described a communication gap between researchers and nursing home residents when the Bureau of Sages began. ‘They were speaking researchese, and I didn’t have any idea what they were talking about. Now they understand we don’t want to hear jargon, and they speak our language.’”
The Bureau of Sages has received two rounds of PCORI funding. In addition to the Kaiser Health News piece, its activities are detailed in a feature story on our website from last year.
PCORI-funded research was also mentioned in a longform feature on transgender health in Nature. The article focuses on The European Network for the Investigation of Gender Incongruence (ENIGI), which is the largest study of transgender people in the world.
As the Nature piece states, “ENIGI and a few other studies hope to change that by providing data on the best treatments and outcomes. The research could also reveal some of the basic biology underlying differences among sexes. Tantalizing hints are already beginning to emerge about the respective roles of hormones and genetics in gender identity. And findings are beginning to clarify the medical and psychological impacts of transitioning.”
One of those few other studies referenced in the piece is a PCORI-funded study led by Michael Goodman, MD, MPH, at Emory University. Results of that study, which monitored the largest cohort of transfeminine and transmasculine people in the United States in research to date, suggest that transgender women who receive estrogen treatments may face a higher risk for stroke and dangerous blood clots than previously thought.
Read more about the PCORI-funded study and its results in a blog post featuring Goodman, as well as a transgender patient partner in his study and the president-elect of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
Stay tuned for more highlights of PCORI-funded research in the media.