The University of New Mexico has been approved for research funding by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). PCORI is a nonprofit organization that funds research designed to provide evidence-based information needed to make better-informed healthcare decisions.
Assistant Psychology Professor Cassie Boness and her team at the Center on Alcohol, Substance Use, and Addictions (CASAA) will bring together over 20 partners across communities, institutions, and types of research to develop a measure of how well various partners are working together on community-engaged research projects.
"The PCORI award is an exciting step towards giving the community decision-making power and autonomy, which will allow it to impact how community-engaged research is reviewed for a range of other projects," said Liliana Spurgeon, a co-investigator and a community partner on the project. "This research has the potential to create a lasting change in making sure that the research used to improve healthcare is more accurate, easier to access, fair, and fits the needs of the community it is serving."
The resulting measure, which the CASAA research team is calling the Research Engagement and Activities in Collaborative Teams (REACT) measure, can be used by community-engaged research teams to evaluate and strengthen their work together to improve health outcomes.
"Community-driven research, like our team's project, is an important approach to address health gaps that are too often ignored. By including the community's opinions and needs, this work supports a more open and culturally appropriate approach to healthcare research," said Spurgeon.
Much has been learned in recent years about participatory research that seeks to involve the ultimate end users of study results, including patients, caregivers, clinicians and others, as partners in the research process. However, until now, there has been little systematic study about which engagement techniques are most effective.
This study is among the latest PCORI has funded focused on building an evidence base to support development of measures and approaches that strengthen meaningful engagement in comparative clinical effectiveness research. The funding award has been approved pending completion of a business and programmatic review by PCORI and issuance of a formal award contract.
