Kim Martz, associate professor in Boise State’s School of Nursing has been approved for a $25,000 funding award by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to support a project on “Advanced Care Planning Research Collaborative.” Martz, along with Sarah Toevs, professor and director of Boise State’s Center for the Study of Aging, Meredith St. Clair, adjunct faculty for Boise State’s Master of Health Science program, and Lynsey Juel with Honoring Choices Idaho® (HCI), will use the funds provided through PCORI’s Pipeline to Proposal Awards program to build a partnership of individuals and groups who share a desire to advance patient-centered outcomes research focused on advanced care planning.
Pipeline to Proposal Awards enable individuals and groups that are not typically involved in clinical research to develop the means to develop community-led funding proposals focused on patient-centered comparative effectiveness research. Established by the nonprofit PCORI, the program funds help individuals or groups build community partnerships, 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 research funders.
In 2016, HCI located at Jannus Inc. received a Tier I Pipeline to Proposal award by PCORI. Using this contract funding, HCI, along with researchers from the Boise State Center for the Study of Aging developed relationships with older adults, healthcare providers, and other community partners to engage in research focused on meaningful advance care planning.
Martz’s funding is a Tier II award, which represents the first PCORI-funded project received by the university and will continue the work from HCI’s Tier I project in exploring preferences and experiences about communication and planning for end-of-life medical care. The research team, in collaboration with Kendall House, lecturer for Boise State’s Department of Anthropology, and John Ziker, professor and chair of Boise State’s Department of Anthropology, is hosting a “Design Jam” with community members to continue development of patient- or person-centered research questions that will guide the project.