The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) board of governors has adopted five National Priorities for Health, which serve as long-term goals to guide PCORI’s funding of patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) and other engagement, dissemination and implementation, and research infrastructure initiatives.
In selecting the priorities, PCORI sought input from numerous stakeholders, including patients and the broader healthcare community, advisors and experts, and advance PCORI’s congressional mandate. This process included a 60-day public comment period and several meetings and events that generated vital feedback reflected in the priorities. Designed to be mutually reinforcing with complementary elements to create synergy for progress, the priorities are:
• Achieve Health Equity: The goal is to expand stakeholder engagement, research, and dissemination approaches that lead to continued progress toward achieving health equity in the United States.
• Increase Evidence for Existing Interventions and Emerging Innovations in Health: The goal is to strengthen and expand ongoing comparative clinical effectiveness research focused on both existing interventions and emerging innovations to improve healthcare practice, health outcomes, and health equity.
• Enhance Infrastructure to Accelerate Patient-Centered Outcomes Research: The goal is to drive lasting improvements in health and transformation of both the research enterprise and care delivery.
• Advance the Science of Dissemination, Implementation, and Health Communication: The goal is to accelerate the effective sharing of comparative clinical effectiveness research results for public understanding and uptake into practice.
• Accelerate Progress Toward an Integrated Learning Health System: The goal is to foster actionable, timely, place-based, and transformative improvements in patient-centered experiences, care provision, and ultimately improved health outcomes through collaborative, multisectoral research to support a health system that understands and serves the needs and preferences of individuals.
“Hearing from our stakeholders was essential to ensure that the National Priorities for Health address pressing national health issues and reflect outcomes important to patients,” said PCORI Executive Director Nakela L. Cook, M.D., M.P.H., in a statement. “This approach affirmed robust support for PCORI’s unique role in the health research enterprise and provided incredibly valuable guidance that strengthened the resulting priorities.”
PCORI’s board of governors also participated in a discussion to develop the research agenda that will provide a framework for achieving progress on the National Priorities for Health, specifically through the strategy of funding CER. PCORI expects to invite public comment on a proposed Research Agenda beginning in December.
