Convening to Support Engagement in Patient-Centered CER Related to Maternal and Perinatal Health in Northwest Arkansas

This PCORI Engagement Award project is designed to build a patient-driven agenda for future patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) in maternal and perinatal health in Northwest Arkansas. Its core objective is to convene pregnant and postpartum patients, caregivers, clinicians, and community partners to identify which Food Is Medicine approaches, outcomes, and care settings matter most when compared with usual prenatal and postpartum care. The project addresses an important gap: national maternal health priorities do not always translate well to semi-rural Arkansas, where patients face language barriers, transportation challenges, fragmented care, food insecurity, and limited culturally tailored services, especially in Marshallese and Spanish-speaking communities. What differentiates this project is that it does not test an intervention; instead, it uses multilingual, patient-led convenings to define relevant comparators, patient-important outcomes, and feasible delivery contexts before future CER is designed. This project positions I³R at the intersection of maternal health, community engagement, and patient-centered research. It also strengthens university impact by building durable clinic-community-academic partnerships and generating a locally grounded research agenda that can support future external funding and follow-on studies.