Which Health and HealthCare Questions Can PCORI Study to Help You? Tell Us

We’ve all been there. In our role as a patient, caregiver or healthcare professional, we have had questions when trying to make a healthcare decision -- but haven’t been able to get a good answer. The problem may be a lack of research, or that the results of a particular study just aren’t clear or meaningful to our particular situation.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) was established to help bridge this gap – to fund research that addresses questions for which patients don’t have the answers they need, so they, and those who care for them, can make better-informed health and healthcare decisions.

Here’s where you come in. We want your help to determine what PCORI should study – and we’re asking you to tell us directly through our website. We’d like to get a better sense of your health and healthcare questions. We’ll use what you tell us to help identify and select some of the specific questions that we’ll fund researchers to study.

You can submit the specific research questions you’d like us to think about funding by filling out a simple form on our website. We’ll carefully consider each one and how it might fit within our portfolio of patient-centered research. In addition to questions about prevention, diagnosis and treatment options, we’d like to know what information you need that could help us fund research that will improve healthcare delivery, address disparities of all types, improve how research is communicated or even improve the research process overall.

One example of a proposed research question might be “Should I see my primary care physician, an orthopedic specialist, or chiropractor for the best care related to my chronic lower back pain?” That’s an actual question we received through the form. This and other suggestions we receive will be carefully evaluated through a selection process that will lead to targeted announcements for research funding.

Join us! Please take a few minutes to submit your research questions. Be part of PCORI’s efforts to change the research process by making the patient’s voice a central piece of how our work is done.