News

Collaborations for Health and Empowered Community-based Scientists (CHECS) Project

AllianceChicago has been approved for a nearly $250,000 funding award through the Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Awards program, an initiative of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). The funds will support the implementation of the CHECS project in the AllianceChicago Community Health Center (CHC) Network.

Nivedita Mohanty, Chief Research Officer and Director of Evidence-based Research, will lead the engagement project at AllianceChicago. The project will focus on training to equip CHC staff and patients to conduct and participate in Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR). The CHECS Project will utilize an existing research training curriculum for new principal investigators which was designed by the Clinical Director’s Network (CDN). The PCOR curriculum, which consists of webinars and supporting materials that are designed to orient community-based providers through the steps and skills needed to create a patient-centered research proposal, are focused on building the capacity of providers to engage patients and to develop a research study with the aim of submitting the final to PCORI’s Pipeline to Proposal or another seed grant program.

The CHECS project is part of a portfolio of projects that PCORI has funded to help develop a community of patients and other healthcare stakeholders who have the knowledge, skills and partnerships to participate in and advance patient-centered outcomes research and patient-centered comparative effectiveness research.

“This project was selected for PCORI Engagement Award funding for its commitment to improving the capacity for patients and other stakeholders to engage in patient-centered research and its potential to increase the usefulness and trustworthiness of the research PCORI funds,” said Jean Slutsky, PCORI’s Chief Engagement and Dissemination Officer. “We look forward to following the project’s progress and working with AllianceChicago to share the results.”

AllianceChicago’s project and the other projects approved for funding by the PCORI Engagement Award Program were selected through a highly competitive review process in which applications were assessed for their ability to meet PCORI’s engagement goals and objectives, as well as program criteria. For more information about PCORI’s funding to support engagement efforts, visit http://www.pcori.org/content/eugene-washington-pcori-engagement-awards/.

PCORI is an independent, non-profit organization authorized by Congress in 2010 to fund comparative effectiveness research that will provide patients, their caregivers, and clinicians with the evidence needed to make better-informed health and healthcare decisions. PCORI is committed to seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work.