Heads up Network faithful – AHRQ intends to promote several new initiatives by publishing Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) to solicit applications for research on Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR).

These projects will support PCOR efforts in many areas, including health care interventions in real world settings, advanced use of the research findings by diverse populations, development of effective patient registries and training and career development for the next generation of researchers.

This Notice of Intent to Publish several Requests for Applications is being provided to allow potential applicants sufficient time to develop meaningful collaborations and responsive projects.  The FOAs are expected to be published beginning in early 2013.

A brief description of the planned FOAs is provided below.

• Patient-Generated Health Outcomes Data and Clinical Decision Support Using Smart Device      Technology – Projects funded under this FOA will examine the feasibility of using patient-generated outcome data collected from home medical devices, mobile communication platforms, and other smart devices to improve clinical decision making and create a registry of patient-generated health outcomes. 
• Enhancing Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) Data Resources – These one-year pilot projects build on substantial AHRQ investments in CER infrastructure.  The goals of this FOA is to provide for maintenance and updating of existing data resources to conduct future CER and enable future, larger competition to enhance the data infrastructure and move the resources to self-sustaining models. The goal of this FOA is to plan for updating and enhancing existing data resources to conduct future CER and move the data infrastructure to self-sustaining models.
• Institutional Mentored Career Development Award Program in PCOR – This FOA will launch a multi-year effort to support the development of patient-centered outcomes researchers in academic and applied settings. The program will combine didactic and experiential opportunities, focusing on the generation, adoption and spread of new scientific evidence.
• Researcher Training and Workforce Development in Methods and Standards for Conducting Patient-Centered Health Outcomes Research Studies – The objective of this FOA is to provides basic, advanced, and experiential training on the methods to conduct patient-centered outcomes research, particularly prospective observational research, registries, clinical trials, and systematic reviews. Projects will include both training and workforce development. In addition, the training program will use the existing suite of comparative effectiveness research/PCOR methods tools as instructional material. 
• Individual Mentored Career Development Award Program in PCOR – AHRQ will provide support for a sustained period of protected time for intensive research career development for individual investigators in academic or applied settings, leading to research independence in the field of PCOR. The training of clinical and research doctorates will focus on the generation and translation of new scientific evidence and analytic tools. 
• Electronic Data Methods (EDM) Forum: Phase II – The next phase of EDM Forum will expand its interactions to other electronic data infrastructure projects that are conducting PCOR and CER, Quality Improvement (QI), and using Health Information Technology (HIT) to support routine clinical care.
• Bringing Evidence to Stakeholders for Translation (BEST) to Primary Care – This FOA will expand the current AHRQ dissemination programs to patients and providers in primary care settings.  Funded projects will focus on an approach to dissemination called practice facilitation, which has been shown in controlled trials to nearly triple the adoption of evidence-based guidelines in primary care.  Projects will connect existing practice facilitation programs to selected patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) networks and national dissemination efforts at AHRQ.
• Disseminating Patient Centered Outcomes Research to Improve Healthcare Delivery Systems  - This FOA draws on AHRQ’s proven method of using existing networks of providers and other key stakeholders to disseminate, translate, and implement delivery system evidence.  This FOA will fund grants to broad-based, pre-established networks of providers and other stakeholders with established relationships, infrastructures, and dissemination channels with a documented track record of successfully taking proven practices to scale or of implementing broad delivery system change.
• Deliberative Approaches for Patient Involvement in Implementing Evidence-Based Health Care – Projects will use a deliberative approach, based on findings of the AHRQ Community Forum deliberative methods experiment, to gather input from patients on a complex topic related to the implementation of evidence-based health-care decision making.

APPLICATIONS ARE NOT BEING SOLICITED AT THIS TIME.

Ariane C. Jones
AHRQ
Phone Number: 301-427-1213
EMAIL address: ariane.jones@ahrq.hhs.gov