Dear Ambassadors,

Welcome to the seventh Call to Action newsletter of the PCORI Ambassador Program. We hope that you and your families are doing well during this uncertain time. We have important updates regarding the 2020 PCORI Virtual Annual Meeting, Research Fundamentals resources, and more.

As a reminder, this newsletter offers concrete calls to action or recommendations for Ambassadors to share valuable PCORI-funded research results, PCORI products, editorial pieces, peer-reviewed literature, and events with their unique communities. Due to the current circumstances with COVID-19, all of our calls to action in this issue are virtual.

Below, you will find four new calls to action to focus on for the next couple of months. You can also access the bonus opportunities at the end of the newsletter. Please complete a survey describing any completed calls to action and bonus opportunities by the end of November.

Keep sending your completed calls to action and bonus opportunities as it shows how Ambassadors are promoting patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) and PCORI in the field. This information will be especially helpful for reporting to PCORI staff and leadership, including the executive team and the Board of Governors.

We hope you will join us and other colleagues from across the healthcare community at the 2020 PCORI Virtual Annual Meeting: Accelerating Impact on Care and Patient-Centered Outcomes, September 16-17. The virtual event seeks to provide timely learning and networking opportunities in a new format. Registration is free and participants can choose to attend sessions of interest. This is PCORI’s first Annual Meeting since our reauthorization in December 2019. Session topics will include maternal morbidity and mortality, intellectual and developmental disabilities, health disparities and inequities, telehealth, COVID-19, and much more!

Strategy #1: Share your registration for the Annual Meeting with at least one colleague to encourage them to join us.

Strategy #2: Introduce someone new to Ambassador Program staff at the virtual Engagement Booth during the meeting. Krista Woodward will be at the booth at the following dates and times: Wednesday (9/16), 12:50-1:10 pm and 2:10-2:30 pm, and Thursday (9/17), 12:45-1:10 pm.

Strategy #3: Check out our promotional toolkit with drop-in content designed to be used across your communication channels—including your website, newsletter, email lists, or social media pages—to promote the 2020 PCORI Virtual Annual Meeting throughout your network. We encourage you to share with at least one colleague that has never attended a PCORI Annual Meeting.

Strategy #4: Share one of these prepared tweets on your Twitter account. We also provide social media language for Facebook and LinkedIn in the promotional toolkit.

You can sign up for one or both Ambassador networking sessions on the registration webpage here.

PCORI recently launched a free online training for those who are new to health research and want to learn more about the research process. Research Fundamentals is a self-paced, on-demand training that uses plain language to describe PCOR and can help everyone, regardless of experience, engage and contribute with confidence. The modular format and downloadable glossary will help users quickly and easily apply what they’ve learned.

Strategy #1: Are you new to PCOR and PCORI? Do you want your organization to be better equipped to partner on research projects? Share the training with your colleagues since it is designed to help anyone understand the language and logic of the research process and stakeholder engagement.

Strategy #2: Are you a researcher or staff member leading a multi-stakeholder team with partners who are new to PCOR? Encourage your research team and partners to go through the online modules together to apply the lessons learned to your own PCOR project. 

Strategy #3: PCORI values the public’s thoughts and feedback on our products to ensure accessibility. Encourage users of the Research Fundamentals modules to submit comments using this form.

Strategy #4: Share this prepared tweet with your networks:                                  

The first quarterly report focusing on COVID-19 topics monitored in the PCORI Health Care Horizon Scanning System is available online. This report covers devices, identifiable risk factors and prognostic indicators, screening and diagnostics, systems and management, treatments, and vaccines and prophylaxis. You can find the report here on the PCORI website (PDF).

Strategy #1: Are you hoping to learn more about current treatments, prevention strategies, and more related to COVID-19 care? Read this Horizon Scanning Report so that you can better understand emergent topics and learnings related to COVID-19.

Strategy #2: Are you a clinician treating patients with COVID-19? Or do you work in a clinic, private practice, or health system that would benefit from reading this Horizon Scanning Report? Share the report with those who would benefit from this information.

Strategy #3: Use this prepared tweet when sharing this Horizon Scanning Report with your network: