*** FYI, posted on behalf of Daniel Frye ** Subject: University of Maryland, School of Pharmacy, PATIENTS 10-Step Research Program Soliciting Blind and Vision-Impaired Participants for a Study Conducted by Telephone Friends and Colleagues: I have been working with the University of Maryland, School of Pharmacy, as a consultant for the last several years. In very simplified form, I agreed to participate, as a representative blind person, on an external advisory panel, consisting of a diverse collection of stakeholders who interact with the American healthcare system. The PATIENTS program has, as its broadest mission, conducting research that will, at its end, help healthcare professionals, across the spectrum of the healthcare system, better engage with, and understand the needs of, patients. This seemed like a worthwhile objective, as a blind person who has experienced less than optimal empathy, access, and communication from representatives from different segments of the healthcare industry. We have now reached a point in the research where we have a need for blind and vision-impaired people to participate in an exercise that is calculated to help achieve research in this arena. I am sharing this invitation with you to participate in a telephone interview, that will last approximately 90 minutes, and will see that you are given a $25 gift card in compensation for your time, as part of this study. I am approaching each of you personally, as friends or colleagues, who I know to be thoughtful and interested in improving the quality of life that blind people experience. I have sent this to each of you in the BCC field of this message to preserve your confidentiality. This is one sphere in which I have devoted some of my personal, discretionary time to try and improve our life experience as blind and vision-impaired people. I will be grateful if some of you would take the time to agree to participate in this important, consumer-focused, research. Following, I am providing some preliminary information about this research opportunity. I realize that the description below is a bit vague and uses some research buzz phrases that may not be familiar to you, but I assure you that this research promises to yield valuable information that should improve the experience of blind and vision-impaired people who engage with the healthcare system. If you are interested in participating, either respond to me alone, by replying only to me, or communicate directly with Hillary Edwards, whose details will be provided below. Again, I am communicating with a random number of my friends and colleagues, with an emphasis on people in Maryland, but since this research is being conducted by phone, I have included other potential research participants from across the country. Please do not feel any obligation to participate, but I am bringing this to you as a personal request that I hope you will consider. The details about the research are here: Dear Stakeholders: The University of Maryland PATIENTS Program is leading a study funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to map methods of engaging patients and stakeholders to the various steps of a research study. We also seek advice regarding the resources required to achieve meaningful and sustained engagement, particularly with the blind and vision impaired community. Given your interest in community-engaged research, we would like to invite you to participate in a ninety-minute interview by phone in the coming month. These interviews will be conducted on a one-on-one basis. During the interview, we seek to learn about your experiences with implementing methods to engage patients and stakeholders throughout the research continuum. In this session, we will describe and discuss with you a ?game board? in which we will ask you to select the engagement methods that you believe are most appropriate at each phase of research. These methods are based on an environmental scan that we conducted during Phase I of our research, and we will ask you if there are other methods that were not uncovered during Phase I. Participants will receive a $25 gift card as compensation for your participation. For more information on the project, please contact Hillary Edwards at 410-706-1068 or hedwards at rx.umaryland.edu . If you have colleagues whom you think would be interested in participating, please pass along our information with a CC or provide us with the referral. Thanks! We look forward to hearing from you. With Kind Regards, Daniel B. Frye, J.D. Executive Director State of New Jersey Department of Human Services COMMISSION FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED 153 Halsey Street, 6th Floor, P.O. Box 47017 Newark, NJ 07101 Office: (973) 648-2324 ? Mobile: 973-951-1156 ? Fax: (973) 648-7364 Email: Daniel.Frye at dhs.state.nj.us _____ This E-mail, including any attachments, may be intended solely for the personal and confidential use of the sender and recipient(s) named above. This message may include advisory, consultative and/or deliberative material and, as such, would be privileged and confidential and not a public document. Any Information in this e-mail identifying a client of the Department of Human Services or the Department of Children and Families is confidential. If you have received this e-mail in error, you must not review, transmit, convert to hard copy, copy, use or disseminate this e-mail or any attachments to it and you must delete this message. You are requested to notify the sender by return e-mail.