TrialBlazers Launch
Big news from the PaTH Network! This February 2026, we are thrilled to roll out TrialBlazers, a brand new community created for curious, passionate adults who want to play an active role in shaping health research.
TrialBlazers brings together patients and caregivers from across the PCORnet community for lively virtual gatherings twice a year. These conversations will focus on patient-centered comparative effectiveness research and, most importantly, the real experiences and perspectives that only patients and caregivers can bring. Through interactive presentations, storytelling, and structured dialogue, attendees will explore the principles, practices, and real-world impacts of PPR within PCORnet and the PATH Network.
If you have already partnered with a research team, this is your chance to share your story, swap insights, and learn from others who have been in your shoes. If you are just starting to think about getting involved in research as a patient partner, TrialBlazers is a welcoming place to learn what to expect and how to get started.
Along the way, we will occasionally invite research experts to join us, hear how patient voices have strengthened their work, and trade ideas about what makes research partnerships truly effective. We will also brainstorm ideas for new study topics and share practical tips for helping patients, families, caregivers, clinicians, health system leaders, and others engage meaningfully at every stage of the research process.
In short, TrialBlazers is about learning together, sharing openly, and helping research work better for everyone. We are looking forward to welcoming an interactive, engaged audience from across the PCORnet community.
TrialBlazers EP.1 Teaser
TrialBlazers Episode 1
TrialBlazers Post-Episode 1
Why does health research seem to contradict itself every day? This video explains the science behind those confusing headlines and how the scientific method helps us separate good psychology studies from bad ones.
Community Partners Help Prioritize Health Care Improvement Topics
PaTH Discovery to Implementation (D2I) Collaboratory
The PaTH Clinical Research Network is growing its engagement reach with the second iteration of the PaTH Discovery to Implementation (D2I) Collaboratory. Established in 2022, D2I promotes health research implementation by incorporating diverse participants throughout our network—health system leaders, implementation science experts, clinicians, insurance payers, research funders, health researchers, patients, caregivers, and research administrators—to prioritize the topics which they believe most need improvement in health care and equity. D2I integrates Learning Health Systems models. principles to bring relevant, measurable improvements in health care.
The D2I process starts with published research from PaTH data and includes multi-phase online surveys of our stakeholders, a two-session moderated teleconference event to discuss and deliberate the prioritized topics, and the development of at least one topic-specific Learning Community. Self-directed Learning Communities are comprised of diverse stakeholders who collaboratively delve into the challenges of a health topic to begin the process of collecting health data, analyzing the data to generate new knowledge, sharing knowledge to develop health care advice, putting that advice into practice, and returning to the beginning of the cycle to gather new data about the effectiveness of the new processes. Each of these activities is integrated in the infrastructure of our research network.
The PaTH Clinical Research Network is growing its engagement reach with the second iteration of the PaTH Discovery to Implementation (D2I) Collaboratory. Established in 2022, D2I promotes health research implementation by incorporating diverse participants throughout our network—health system leaders, implementation science experts, clinicians, insurance payers, research funders, health researchers, patients, caregivers, and research administrators—to prioritize the topics which they believe most need improvement in health care and equity. D2I integrates Learning Health Systems models. principles to bring relevant, measurable improvements in health care.
The D2I process starts with published research from PaTH data and includes multi-phase online surveys of our stakeholders, a two-session moderated teleconference event to discuss and deliberate the prioritized topics, and the development of at least one topic-specific Learning Community. Self-directed Learning Communities are comprised of diverse stakeholders who collaboratively delve into the challenges of a health topic to begin the process of collecting health data, analyzing the data to generate new knowledge, sharing knowledge to develop health care advice, putting that advice into practice, and returning to the beginning of the cycle to gather new data about the effectiveness of the new processes. Each of these activities is integrated in the infrastructure of our research network.
PaTH now has two Learning Communities that are open to participants who are passionate about improving health and health care! These groups meet monthly on Zoom to discuss and carry out health care improvement initiatives.
- The Hypertension Learning Community is investigating patient perspectives about living with high blood pressure and planning data-driven changes to blood pressure control. This group emerged from our first D2I cycle and has been active for two years.
- The Diabetes and Kidney Disease Learning Community held its kick-off meeting on February 6 and is already promising to be a vibrant and enthusiastic collaboration.
If you or someone affiliated with your PaTH site would be interested in joining a Learning Community, please contact Autumn Boyer (arb352@pitt.edu) to learn more and receive a link to our monthly sessions. We’d love to collaborate with you!
Word Cloud of D2I collaborators’ observations following their participation in our 2023 live event
What is a patient or community partner?
Patient Partners work with our research teams to shape meaningful research questions and develop ways to let patients and other stakeholders learn about findings that may matter to them.
PaTH to Health: Diabetes, Chocolate Making & Data Extraction
SHARE YOUR STORY WITH THE MYPATH STORY BOOTH
We Want to Hear From You!
We rely on input from community partners to understand patient and caregiver needs. Stop by the MyPaTH Story Booth for a quiet and comfortable space where you can audio-record your story about health, illness, or your experience with the health care system. We can’t wait to hear from you!
We rely on input from community partners to understand patient and caregiver needs. Stop by the MyPaTH Story Booth for a quiet and comfortable space where you can audio-record your story about health, illness, or your experience with the health care system. We can’t wait to hear from you!
SUGGEST A QUESTION
Do you know of a health challenge that could be improved? Click below to share it with health researchers.
STORY BOOTH
Schedule an appointment to share your story through the MyPaTH Story Booth by clicking below or e-mail us at mystory@pitt.edu.
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