This Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Funding Announcement seeks to fund high-impact, patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) projects led by researcher and community partnerships to focus on advancing care and outcomes across different phases of the cancer care continuum.
Donor Name: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 01/06/2026
Size of the Grant: More than $1 million
Grant Duration: 5 Years
Details:
The Cancer Partner PFA invites CER applications led by researcher-community partnerships that may focus on a range of research questions and decisional dilemmas relevant to the participating communities that address variations in care and outcomes across the cancer continuum. PCORI is particularly interested in submissions that address the following Special Areas of Emphasis (SAEs). The purpose of identifying these SAEs is to encourage submissions to these areas, not to limit submissions to these topics alone. Applicants addressing one of the following SAEs should identify the area that is best associated with their research approach:
- Addressing barriers to recommended cancer screening and timely follow-up in the general population and among individuals at high risk of cancer
- Improving the delivery of patient-centered, evidence-based care during cancer treatment
- Addressing the post-treatment, follow-up care needs of cancer survivors
The Cancer Partner PFA includes the following considerations for potential applicants that are either required or strongly encouraged.
Required
- Proposals must include dual principal investigators (PIs) — one PI from a research organization and one from a community organization — to address research questions or decisional dilemmas currently faced by the communities participating in the study. These two lead research and community organizations are referred to as the “core research-community partnership” for the study.
- The two dual PIs from the research and community organizations must have previously collaborated with each other on research and/or health initiatives.
- The PI from the research organization must have prior experience in conducting community-partnered research studies.
- The community organization in the core research-community partnership must have prior research experience and/or experience in implementing health initiatives in community settings. Beyond the core researcher-community partnership, applicants are required to engage with other organizations that represent the appropriate range of expertise and knowledge of the population of interest needed to carry out the award successfully (i.e., the broad coalition of community partners), including organizations helpful for sustainability and scalability of the interventions (e.g., health system leaders; public or private payers).
- Applicants must complete the following activities before submission of the application:
- Propose research questions, interventions, and outcomes that are important to the communities participating in the study.
- In addition to finalizing the core research-community partnership, identify and obtain letters of support from all the community partner organizations that will serve on the broader coalition of partners to advise the study team throughout the research period.
- Develop a clear plan for shared leadership between the research and community core partners for decision making and implementing proposed study activities and identify detailed roles and responsibilities for the broader coalition of community partners/advisors.
- Finalize and obtain letters of support from participating sites for the study.
- Develop a clear plan for minor adaptation of interventions for communities participating in the study, as appropriate, in consultation with partners.
- Develop a sustainability plan to be included in the application that underscores commitments of key decision makers for long-term sustainability of the interventions in participating sites and communities.
Strongly encouraged
- Applicants are strongly encouraged to propose research and community organizations for the core partnership that have evidence of prior established partnership. Examples of established partnerships among research and community organizations include but are not limited to a community organization participating on an advisory board for a study conducted by the research organization, a research organization advising a community organization leading a research or health initiative, or community and research organizations collaborating as investigators on a research study.
- Applicants are strongly encouraged to leverage existing research infrastructure, networks, and coalitions to enhance research efficiency, participant representativeness. and dissemination/adoption of study findings.
- Applicants are strongly encouraged to propose multi-level and/or multi-component interventions that include, in addition to healthcare delivery-related intervention components, a focus on community-based drivers of health (e.g., social, psychological and behavioral factors such as transportation, language barriers, individual and/or community beliefs, and health behaviors).
- Applicants are strongly encouraged to facilitate generalizability and uptake of findings to community care delivery settings by including patients receiving care from non-academic, community clinics and hospitals.
Funding Information
- Funds Available: Up To $60 million
- Up to $12 million in direct costs
- Up to $13 million in direct costs may be considered for studies proposing powered outcomes at or beyond 24 months.
Project Period
5 years.
Eligibility Criteria
- In general, applications for the conduct of research and management of funding may be submitted by appropriate academic research, private sector research or study-conducting entities. This may include, among others, agencies and instrumentalities of the federal government, nonprofit and for-profit research organizations, and colleges and universities.
- In general, foreign organizations and nondomestic components of U.S. organizations may apply for PCORI funding with the requirement that they provide a thorough and thoughtful justification for the research’s ability to benefit health care in the United States. However, because of the strong focus on local community involvement and because the results must be relevant to and implementable in the United States, only U.S. organizations are allowed to apply to the Cancer Partner PFA. For this PFA, the two research and community organizations forming the core research-community partnership to co-lead the study must be U.S. organizations and must enroll patients from sites and communities in the U.S. The Internal Revenue Service must recognize all U.S. applicant organizations.
For more information, visit PCORI.
