What is the PEC?
The Patient Engagement Core (PEC), also commonly referred to as Research Jam, engages patients—and, more broadly, participant stakeholders on all sides of a study—in an interactive research process that invites them to play an integral role in defining and solving study challenges throughout all phases of research. These phases include pre-study preparation (recruitment, measurement, acceptability), study maintenance (adherence, loss to follow-up, unanticipated barriers), and post-study outreach (dissemination).
What does the PEC do?
The PEC meets with the study’s Principal Investigator (PI) to understand the study’s stakeholders, understand study needs, and establish clear objectives. The PEC then develops agendas for co-design sessions that engage study stakeholders (patients, medical providers, community members, etc.) in sharing their experiences and ideas. These sessions are made up of activities that explore underlying concepts of the PI’s objectives in order to arrive at insights that help shape relevant and effective deliverables to make the research more responsive to stakeholders needs and desires.
Those deliverables are often then developed by the PEC for the PI.
What does the PEC not do?
The PEC requests that the PI and his/her study team recruit attendees of the co-design sessions. The PI is responsible for the cost of production services that require outside vendors, such as printing, complex programming, etc.
Learn more about the PEC at the researchjam.org website.