Congratulations to Mandi Pratt-Chapman, M.A., associate center director for patient-centered initiatives and health equity at the George Washington University (GW) Cancer Center, who received a $15,000 Tier I Pipeline to Proposal Award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). The award will be used to better understand the health concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals in Washington, D.C., which has one of the highest LGBT populations in the U.S.
“Nationally, LGBT groups carry higher risk for cancer and later stage diagnosis. We are excited about working directly within the community to better understand the health concerns of patients and families and how we can alleviate disparities and improve health outcomes," said Pratt-Chapman. “Promoting health equity in the LGBT population is a priority for the GW Cancer Center - I am proud of our leadership in this area and am honored to be making significant steps with this project."
The award will fund a nine-month project, where Pratt-Chapman and her team will:
- Expand existing partnerships with LGBT-serving community-based organizations
- Work with a community advisory board (CAB) to ensure identification of health concerns most important to the LGBT population in the District
- Work with the CAB to prioritize top research needs based on feedback from the community and begin to develop possible comparative effectiveness research (CER) approaches to one topic
Established by the nonprofit PCORI, Pipeline to Proposal Awards help individuals and groups not normally involved in clinical research develop the means to create community-led funding proposals focused on patient-centered CER. The program funds three tiers of awards that help build partnerships between patients, researchers, and other stakeholders, develop research capacity, and hone a comparative effectiveness research question that could become the basis of a research funding proposal to submit to PCORI or other health care research funders.
“The Pipeline to Proposal Awards program is a manifestation of PCORI’s commitment to the meaningful involvement of patients, caregivers, clinicians, and other stakeholders in all our research endeavors," said Jean Slutsky, PA, MSPH, PCORI's Chief Engagement and Dissemination Officer. “It provides support to those who may not otherwise have an opportunity to contribute to the field of comparative effectiveness research. We’re pleased to follow the awardees’ progress as they develop partnerships and begin to form research questions."
PCORI is an independent, nonprofit 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.
For more information on the project, please visit http://www.pcori.org/research-results/2016/building-foundation-community-led-research-eliminate-lgbt-cancer-disparities.
