PCORI Funding

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has recently announced a funding opportunity that will provide $5 million in direct costs for comparative effectiveness research (CER) projects that address optimizing physical and mental functioning for community-dwelling older adults and their caregivers. These projects will have one or more of the following goals:

• Maintaining function and independence
• Facilitating chronic disease management
• Supporting individuals with significant functional impairment
• Reducing caregiving burden and improving quality of life

Applications may focus on populations in different phases of the aging continuum except for those at the two extremes, i.e., the healthiest of older adults with no chronic health condition and those who require end-of-life care. Interventions may be delivered in primary and specialty care clinics as well as in home and community-based settings (e.g., assisted living, senior housing and retirement communities, adult day care programs), but not in institutional settings such as hospitals or nursing homes.

Applicants will be strongly encouraged to propose individual, or cluster randomized controlled trials, however, well-specified natural experiments will also be considered. Applicants will be asked to pay special attention to issues of intervention implementation with an aim of facilitating widespread uptake of findings after completion of the study. Toward that end, hybrid type I and hybrid type II designs may also be considered appropriate.

Population

Community-living older adults and their caregivers. Applications focused on the needs of under-served, underrepresented, or historically excluded populations will be encouraged.

Interventions/Comparators

Head-to-head comparisons of evidence-based interventions that target optimizing healthy aging

Outcomes

Clinically meaningful and considered important by patients and/or their caregivers and which can be impacted upon by interventions evaluated in CER studies of a maximum duration of five years

Funding

Total allocated for this PFA: Up to $50 million in total costs
Total direct funding: $5 million

Maximum project duration

Five years

Important dates

July 14 – Pre-Release Public Applicant Forum
September 7 – Applications open
September 13 – Town Hall
October 5 – Letters of Intent due
January 11 – Applications due
April 2022 – Merit review
July 2022 – Awards announced
November 2022 – Earliest start date

For more information or to request a brief consultation, please contact Leslie MacGregor, PCORI Funding Specialist: Leslie_MacGregor@hms.harvard.edu