2026 CTSI Annual Forum recap: What PCORI applicants need to know

The 2026 University at Buffalo Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Annual Forum on April 16 at the Clinical and Translational Research Center drew a large, engaged crowd and featured a keynote from the Chief Officer of Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, PCORI.

PCORI’s Tracy Yu-Ping Wang, MD, MHS, MSc, presented “Engaging Patients and Communities in Clinical Research to Improve Health Care and Outcomes,” a talk aimed at clarifying what investigators need to know before applying for PCORI funding. The nonprofit research funding organization supports comparative clinical effectiveness research to help people make informed healthcare decisions and improves healthcare delivery and outcomes by producing evidence from research guided by patients, their caregivers, and the broader health and healthcare community.

In his introduction to Wang’s presentation, CTSI Director Sanjay Sethi, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Senior Associate Dean for Clinical and Translational Research, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, called attention to the “commonalities” that exist between PCORI and the CTSI.

“We are both very focused on the community, on effectiveness, and on improving healthcare and delivery,” Sethi explained.

During her talk, Wang outlined how her 20 years as a cardiologist and researcher led her to PCORI. She also identified the types of research funded by PCORI, and how to know whether a project is the right fit for such funding. Wang’s full presentation, including a Q&A session, is available for viewing via the CTSI YouTube account.

Here are 10 takeaways from Wang’s keynote:

• PCORI aims to help people make informed choices. “As a research funding agency, we came into existence because the American public wanted an organization that funds research that helps them make health choices,” Wang explained. “My ultimate job is to make sure that what we fund actually changes practice, and actually helps people make decisions.”
• To help people choose, PCORI funds comparative studies. “In order to actually make a choice, people need the evidence — hard science that helps them make a decision,” Wang said. “So, fundamentally, the word ‘comparative’ is important because [a study] must compare between two or more things.”
• Applicants must demonstrate to PCORI reviewers that their study is centered on an important public health issue. “We do not decide what it is that we are trying to fund — you tell us,” Wang stated. “You make the case to the reviewers who review your application that this is a critical clinical health decision or dilemma, that your science is good, and that this is worthy of funding.”
• PCORI funds a wide range of studies and dollar amounts. “[PCORI studies] have budgets that can go from $1 million all the way up to $12 million in direct costs,” Wang shared. “A lot of folks have this mistaken feeling that we only pay attention to the larger applicant dollar application. That is not true. We created that range so that we will fund $1 million studies, and we will fund $12 million studies, and we will fund a lot of things in between. It could be a retrospective study, [or] it could be a prospective study.”
• All PCORI-funded clinical research involves patients and community members. “Even if you had the best, most novel, most rigorously designed research study, if you did not have a patient or community leader within your research plan, you are not going to get funded by PCORI,” Wang said. “If you do not have meaningful engagement of patient partners in the decision making for your clinical trial, [and] if you are expecting a patient to volunteer their time without paying for their role in your clinical trial, you are not going to get funded by PCORI.”
• Shared leadership between researchers and community members is vital to PCORI. Wang: “You need to set up engagement leads, and your engagement leads must be invested with enough power to help you guide, study, design, and make operational decisions. They must have a role in your research. They are not there to be recruitment directors or facilitators. They are not there to just say, ‘This is what I think about your research proposal.’ We want that ‘our’ project kind of mentality.”
• Projects need to show evidence of widespread use. Wang emphasized, "You cannot just say, ‘I think it is in widespread use.’ That is not going to cut it. You are going to need some evidence of widespread use,” Wang explained. “Tap into your data to show that it is actually being thought about and used in a geographically representative way.”
• Funded projects are intended to be implemented and used publicly. “We want to make sure that what we fund, once it has generated a result, is not just to get published and then sit on a shelf somewhere,” Wang stated. “What are we going to do with those results? How do we talk to the public about those results?”
• PCORI does not fund the development, validation, or testing of new instruments and risk prediction models. Wang: “We do not fund ‘let's try it and see’ experiments. Everything we fund [must] be able to generate a result at the end of the day. So, no pilot studies. It must be research — not quality improvement.”
• Only half of PCORI reviewers are scientists and researchers. The other half includes patients, community organization leaders, health policy representatives, public health department officials, and others. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to talk not just to the researcher part of the review panel, but to the community part of the review panel,” Wang explained. “In other words, when you are putting together an application as a researcher, take your researcher hat off and [consider] the other side: ‘As a general public member, what do I think about this project?’”

In addition to the keynote, the Annual Forum featured recognition of 2025 Buffalo Translational Consortium Clinical Research Achievement Awards recipients by Anne B. Curtis, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Chair, Clinical Research Achievement Awards Committee; presentations from Top Award recipient David Jacobs, PharmD, PhD, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Finalist Ekaterina Noyes, PhD, MPH, School of Public Health and Health Professions; a post-awards reception honoring Jacobs and Noyes; introductory remarks from Sethi and Allison Brashear, MD, MBA, Vice President of Health Sciences and Dean, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences; and a “State of the CTSI” address from Sethi.

See photos from the Annual Forum, taken by UB’s Sandra Kicman.