The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has announced $37 million in funding awards focused on antibiotic prescribing and weight loss treatment.
The awards, covering more than 2,300 care sites across the country, are being given through PCORI’s Health Systems Implementation Initiative (HSII), will support 25 projects implementing PCORI-funded comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) findings in participating HSII health systems.
The growing number of drug-resistant infections and rising obesity rates in adults are two healthcare challenges addressed through PCORI's inaugural HSII implementation projects.
These are the first implementation project awards under the multiyear HSII, which PCORI launched in 2023. HSII is part of PCORI's commitment to reduce the often-cited 17-year gap between research publication and clinical adoption.
“It takes an intentional, dedicated effort to change clinical practice on the basis of new evidence, which is why PCORI is committed to promoting the dissemination and adoption of patient-centered CER results in healthcare settings,” said PCORI Deputy Executive Director for Patient-Centered Research Programs Harv Feldman, M.D., in a statement. “These HSII implementation projects will use implementation practices that will be able to be leveraged nationwide, leading to lasting improvements in patient care across U.S. health systems.”
The projects will focus on one of two main areas:
• Improving antibiotic prescribing practices for treating children with acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs) in outpatient settings.
• Implementing effective intensive lifestyle treatment programs for weight loss into primary care settings.
This could have potential impact on care for 1.5 million children seen for ARTIs and more than 50,000 adults completing a weight loss program.
“PCORI’s Health Systems Implementation Initiative innovatively bridges the gap between research and practice,” said PCORI Executive Director Nakela L. Cook, M.D., M.P.H., in a statement. “By funding projects like these, we are proactively supporting the uptake of evidence from PCORI-funded patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research in clinical settings. This initiative enables clinicians and health systems to not only access but also effectively scale implementation of patient-centered evidence, to improve care delivery and patient outcomes.”
One goal is improving antibiotic prescribing by implementing findings from a large PCORI-funded CER study demonstrating that narrow-spectrum antibiotics were as effective as broad-spectrum antibiotics in treating acute respiratory tract infections among children, with fewer side effects.
The weight loss treatment projects will implement intensive lifestyle treatment programs for weight loss within primary care settings, based on two PCORI-funded CER studies. These studies produced evidence in favor of two clinical interventions, a health coaching program and a clinic-based group visits program.
