Dr. Cindy Blitz, Executive Director at the Center for Effective School Practices, Rutgers University (RU-CESP) and Seema Basi, M.D have been approved for a $50,000 funding award by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to support a project on Improving the Provision of Mental Health Care for Patients with End-Stage Renal Disease and their Caregivers.

RU-CESP 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 establishing a patient-caregiver-clinician-researcher partnership (PCCRP) for patients suffering from renal failure.

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 (CER). Established by the non-profit 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.
Through the PCCRP our goal is to identify potentially effective mechanisms for increasing access to and utilization of Mental Health treatment for dialysis patients. The partnership team will consist of individuals with a diverse set of expertise, perspectives, and roles, including some, like caregivers and advocates. Together, we will work to establish a collaborative communication platform – both face-to-face and online – that will enable the type of conversations and exchanges we envision having.