PCORI Engagement Award Public Input Analysis Project

People in an office talking in front of a glass wall covered in colorful post-it notes

Problem

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) sought to improve future Engagement Award (EA) funding opportunities.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Eugene Washington Engagement Award (EA) program supports engagement projects across three areas: capacity building, dissemination initiatives, and stakeholder convening support. After expanding capacity building funding opportunities to include prior awardees in 2024,PCORI aimed to deepen its understanding about the experiences and perspectives of returning awardees and how to enhance opportunities for them. PCORI wanted to know how returning organizations approached new applications, what types of activities and support they needed to extend earlier work in patient-centered clinical comparative effectiveness research (CER), and where existing funding structures created gaps or constraints. PCORI wanted clearer insight into the real-world challenges and opportunities returning awardees faced as they continued building capacity for meaningful engagement in CER.

This work held broad public value because robust, sustained engagement of patients and stakeholders is central to producing research that reflects community priorities and improves health outcomes. By identifying cross-cutting themes and actionable recommendations from returning awardees, the project equipped PCORI to refine the EA program and strengthen future capacity building opportunities. This aligned with NORC’s mission to provide rigorous, actionable insights that support public-serving institutions and advance equitable, community-centered research.

Solution

NORC developed an integrated qualitative approach to synthesize diverse feedback from returning awardees for PCORI

PCORI commissioned NORC to analyze feedback they received on their EA program to identify ways that the program could be improved or expanded. The project required examining qualitative data that PCORI had collected through three methods: responses to a public request for information, key informant interviews with past awardees, and feedback shared at a facilitated meeting.. Together, these sources reflected a wide range of perspectives, which created an analytic challenge and an opportunity to generate a comprehensive view of returning awardees’ experiences.

NORC addressed this challenge by developing a unified coding framework that could be applied consistently across all qualitative inputs. This allowed the team to triangulate themes, compare insights across sources, and identify limitations or gaps in existing funding opportunities. The approach also made it possible to surface awardees’ suggestions for new or refined mechanisms that could better support capacity building in patient-centered CER.

This work demonstrated NORC’s capacity to translate diverse qualitative feedback into clear, actionable guidance. By synthesizing awardees’ experiences, NORC provided PCORI with practical recommendations to inform future funding opportunities and enhancements to the EA Program.

Result

NORC delivered actionable qualitative insights that informed enhancements to PCORI’s Engagement Award program experience for returning and future awardees.

NORC’s analysis identified cross-cutting themes and synthesize findings that highlighted returning awardees’ priorities, the types of activities they hoped to pursue, and the funding levels and timeframes needed to extend their patient-centered CER work. The synthesis also revealed gaps in the current structure of opportunities and surfaced practical suggestions for how PCORI could better support returning awardees through refined or new award mechanisms.

These findings were shared with PCORI through an internal memo, a summary, and a presentation, ensuring that insights were accessible to both internal decision-makers and external stakeholders. The recommendations informed PCORI’s ongoing planning process as they continued exploring enhancements to the Engagement Award Program. The project demonstrated how rigorous qualitative synthesis can guide funders in shaping opportunities that better meet community and stakeholder needs.