Funding Opportunities

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) intends to release a Phased Large Awards for Comparative Effectiveness Research (PLACER) PCORI Funding Announcement (PFA) on Aug. 12, 2025, with the goal of funding high-quality patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) projects. This preannouncement provides potential applicants additional time to identify collaborators; obtain patient, community and partner input on potential studies; and create responsive, high-quality proposals. PCORI seeks to fund patient-centered CER comparing two or more alternatives, each of which has established efficacy and/or is in widespread use. PCORI is interested in research that aims to fill pertinent evidence gaps representing decisional dilemmas for patients, caregivers, clinicians, policy makers, and other healthcare system stakeholders, with a goal of generating evidence that helps patients and members of the broader health and healthcare community make informed decisions about their health care and health outcomes. Investigators must propose an individual-level or cluster-randomized controlled trial of significant scale and scope for this PFA. The proposed trial should address a health decisional dilemma that critically needs new evidence about the comparative clinical effectiveness of available interventions. Proposed studies should compare interventions that already have robust evidence of efficacy and are in current use. If efficacy is not well established, then widespread use must be documented. Clinical interventions (such as medications, diagnostic tests or procedures) and delivery system interventions (such as technologies or healthcare service delivery designs) are appropriate for these studies. To be considered responsive, applications must propose research that meets the distinctive requirements of this PFA. This funding announcement anticipates that proposed research projects will require two phases of funding. The initial phase of funding supports a distinct feasibility phase intended for infrastructure establishment, patient and stakeholder engagement, feasibility testing of study operations, including successfully recruiting, enrolling and randomizing participants, and study refinement where appropriate. Using the feasibility phase to establish evidence of an intervention’s efficacy or effect size is not permitted. Approval to proceed to the second phase will be contingent on achieving milestones and deliverables established for the feasibility phase. *Please note: Considering the significant effort, time and PCORI funding required for PLACER awards, applications should focus on comparing existing interventions. Evaluations of emerging innovations are more responsive to other PCORI funding opportunities such as the Broad Pragmatic Studies PFA, which is offered concurrently with the PLACER PFA.