PCORI Engagement Award: Capacity Building

Programmatic questions: ea@pcori.org

Technical questions: pfa@pcori.org

The Eugene Washington Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Engagement Awards program offers the chance to build capacity and skills for patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER). Capacity building to support patient-centered CER refers to projects that:

• Help patients, families, caregivers and individuals within the broader healthcare community who are not researchers to engage as partners in future patient-centered CER
• Strengthen the skills of researchers to be better partners with patients, families, caregivers and individuals
• Support prior Engagement Award Program awardees returning as applicants to grow the impact of their capacity-building work

Applications must show:

• An understanding of patient-centered CER basics
• A demonstrated need to build additional capacity among patients, families, caregivers and individuals within the broader healthcare community to take part in future patient-centered CER
• A pathway to future patient-centered CER participation
• How information and learnings that benefit both the applicant organization and others doing related work will be generated and shared, including dissemination to participating communities
• The organization's relationship with and experience engaging the project's community of focus
• How patients, families, caregivers and/or individuals within the broader healthcare community will lead and participate throughout the project

Projects should result in tools and resources that are useful for increasing patient and/or other stakeholder engagement in the patient-centered clinical effectiveness research (CER) process from topic generation to dissemination and implementation of results. For examples, see the Engagement Tool and Resource Repository. Project teams are expected to address the 6 Foundational Expectations for Partnerships in Research in their application.

PCORI funding interests include research for improved access and delivery of care for rural communities.

Research Project Agenda Topic Themes

Applications may be submitted by:

• Nonprofit organizations
• For-profit organizations

U.S.-based applicants must have a Federal Employer Identification Number assigned by the Internal Revenue Service.

Foreign organizations and nondomestic parts of U.S. organizations must show how the project will benefit the U.S. healthcare system and that engagement plans include U.S. patients and stakeholders.

Up to $300,000 for a 2 year project period.

Application instructions and links to additional guidance are available on the program website.

Applicants must submit a letter of intent through the online portal by March 30, 2026. Selected applicants will be invited to submit a full proposal, with a deadline of July 13, 2026.