ABSTRACT
Palliative care is a growing specialty that addresses the needs of individuals diagnosed with advanced illness and their caregivers. Although palliative care has been shown to improve a variety of patient- and caregiver-centered outcomes, access to comprehensive palliative care services for patients is often limited. There is a need to identify the most effective approaches to delivering palliative care to patients in community settings. In fiscal year 2017, based on extensive input from a diverse set of stakeholders, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) funded nine multisite comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) trials focused on community-based delivery of palliative care for a total investment of $80 million. These studies, focusing on advance care planning and models of palliative care delivery, represent some of the largest most complex palliative care trials funded to date. Each study evaluates both patient and caregiver outcomes, and together, these trials include a broad range of health conditions, interventions, and settings of care. PCORI has also fostered a learning network of the funded awardees to facilitate the successful conduct of these CER studies and to support awardee efforts to develop collaborative products relevant to advancing the field of palliative care research and practice. The protocols of each of the nine trials, detailed in this issue, demonstrate the expansive reach of the investment PCORI has made in an effort to further the research agenda and provide substantive research evidence in stakeholder-identified areas of need in the field of palliative care.