Dear Engagement Awardees,
The deadline for the Engagement Award Special Cycle Funding Announcements is quickly approaching. If you plan to apply, don't forget to submit a full proposal (a Letter of Intent is not required) by May 24. If you would like to help spread the word about these funding announcements, feel free to use our promotional materials with your network. Additional information regarding the funding announcements can be found below.
This month, we are shining a spotlight on Engagement awardee University of South Florida. Our Shout Out for the month goes to the ASPIRE team at University of California, San Francisco. Keep reading to learn more about these awardees’ exciting projects!
Eugene Washington Engagement Awards Program Team
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COVID, IDD Engagement Award Funding Available-Deadline Approaching
To chat with a program officer to discuss the funding announcement that best fits your specific project idea, please email ea@pcori.org.
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1. Briefly, what is happening with your project currently?
Our partnership, myPATH: a patient-centered Partnership Addressing Trauma and Healing, includes 20 individuals with diverse professional and personal experiences related to trauma. Our aim is to expand and strengthen relationships with its partnership and larger networks; prepare partners and networks to engage and collaborate in patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR), CER, and strategies that create a safe, engaging environment for trauma survivors; and establish infrastructure to sustain relationships, engagement, and collaboration, in order to prepare for planning CER. Achieving these aims will result in a sustainable partnership and collaborative that involves trauma survivors meaningfully in all phases of the research. May is National Trauma Awareness Month, and we are very grateful for this opportunity to highlight two current initiatives.
First, we have prepared training about trauma, trauma-informed care, and trauma-informed research, which we are trying to disseminate as widely as possible. The training is suitable for the general public, research partnerships studying a variety of physical and behavioral health conditions, and various types of professionals (several professions can earn free CEUs). Twelve different partners presented segments for the training, integrating academic, clinical, and personal perspectives. The training can be accessed through our website: https://www.usf.edu/cbcs/mhlp/centers/mypath/
Second, we are exploring the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for primary care patients and professionals, focusing on well-being and telehealth. We received responses from online surveys from adults with lived experiences, as well as professionals from various disciplines (e.g., medicine, nursing, behavioral health, social work). Participants were recruited from six networks affiliated with our partnership: USF Health, Crisis Center of Tampa Bay, University of Florida H. James Free Primary Care Education and Innovations, NAMI-Florida, Central Florida Behavioral Health Network, Active Minds). Preliminary findings have been shared with myPATH partners and at the University of Florida Primary Care Innovations conference.
2. What has been promising or exciting so far?
The most gratifying observation thus far has been partners’ engagement, including supporting each other during the COVID-19 pandemic and working together to develop our name, website, training program, and the COVID-19 Enhancement project. In October, we had a special “Recording Day” on the USF campus (outside, appropriately distanced), when a professional videographer with Spectrum BayNews9 recorded several partners’ personal statements for our online training. BayNews9 also ran a feature to showcase our work thus far and to raise awareness about trauma-informed care.
Second, we are excited to report preliminary findings from our COVID-19 Enhancement project, which are revealing distress, as well as resiliency and post-traumatic growth amid a global pandemic. Other emerging themes from the data include resourcefulness, hope, and promising applications for telehealth.
3. What challenges have your team encountered?
As with all patient-centered projects that require ongoing commitment and engagement, we have been challenged with obtaining full, consistent engagement from all stakeholders. This is to be expected due to time constraints and logistics with meetings and communications, as well as challenges that have arisen during the pandemic. We regularly seek feedback through anonymous surveys to refine our collaboration to best meet the needs of our stakeholders and seem to have been successful thus far in responding to their requests.
4. In an ideal world, what would the maximum potential of your project’s outcomes be?
If we are successful with our long-term goals, all primary care settings will be trauma-informed, and primary care patients with trauma histories (which is the majority of patients) will have ready access to patient-centered, effective interventions (in-person and telehealth) to address their holistic physical and behavioral health challenges. We are very hopeful that the relationships we have established, along with our training, will build the foundation to conduct patient-centered, comparative effectiveness research on interventions to contribute to this long-term goal.
5. Would you like to highlight anything else?
We would like to underscore the ongoing commitment of all our engaged stakeholders to build capacity for research. Without their collaboration, these accomplishments and upcoming plans would not have been possible. We sincerely appreciate PCORI for providing the opportunity for us to conduct this vital work to impact our communities.
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We would like to extend a shout out to the ASPIRE team at University of California, San Francisco for their work in launching a Patient and Community Advisory Board (PCAB) as part of their COVID-19-related project enhancement. Here are a few takeaways they have shared with us:
The glaring health disparities the COVID emergency illuminated made it very clear that patient and community research advising must center health equity and the design and implementation must be framed accordingly.
Community members must be equal partners (e.g., not just research participants) and involved earlier in the proposal and study process. PCAB members are experts in their own right and should be compensated accordingly.
Researchers must acknowledge the burden experienced by PCAB members and the communities they represent (e.g., higher rates of disease, death, and inequities) and associated triggers in these discussions that evoke their experiences with cultural, racial/ethnic, and historical trauma.
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Welcome new awardees! Since our last Digest, the following awardees and team members have joined us (identified by the project lead's institution), bringing the listserv’s membership to 598 people.
- LeRoy Graham, Allergy & Asthma Network*
- Wendy Warring, NEHI-The Network for Excellence in Health Innovation
- Shilpa Venkatachalam, Global Healthy Living Foundation*
- Eliot Fishman, Families USA*
- Courtney Berrios, Children's Mercy Hospital
- Nina Wallerstein, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center
- Zohreh Talebizadeh, Children's Mercy Research Institute*
- Kristin Rising, Thomas Jefferson University
- James Gray, Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital*
- Deepa Sekhar, Penn State University Hershey Medical Center
- Una Lee, Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason
- Krista Clancy, Wayne State University
- Virginia Ladd, American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, Inc.
- Michelle Price, Coalition for National Trauma Research
- Cheryl Krause-Parello, Florida Atlantic University*
- Megan Patterson, Vascular Cures
- Nicole Brandt, University of Maryland, School of Pharmacy
- Audrey Nuamah, Center for Health Care Strategies**
- Anna Benyo, Center for Health Care Strategies**
* Current/past awardee, new project
**Existing award, newly added to listserv
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Thanks to the University of South Florida team for contributing to the Spotlight this month.
If you wish to change the email address of the contact/delegate or teammates who receive this Digest or would like to be featured in a future Spotlight or Shout Out, please reach out to us at eaadmin@pcori.org. Please note, Spotlight features highlight exciting accomplishments from projects that are more than one year into the project period.
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