Research Syntheses

Each day, thousands of health policy makers and health care administrators make decisions that influence our health system and the care received by Canadians. While decision making in health care is a complex process, research evidence has an important role to play. Decision makers must have access to the best available evidence and this often takes the form of results from more than one study or project. In such situations, syntheses become important tools for translating a body of evidence into a form and format useful to decision makers.

Research syntheses use systematic methods to aggregate evidence on particular topics. Individual studies that meet defined quality standards are identified, selected and appraised, and their results are then analyzed and summarized, taking quality assessments into consideration. Syntheses can reduce biases that may be evident in single studies and allow more precise estimation of the impact of an intervention or policy option.

CIHR has now run three competitions dedicated to funding syntheses of health services and systems research in areas of importance to health and health care, as well as the rapid response competition to inform the development of wait time benchmarks. Information on these competitions can be accessed at the following links:

• Research Syntheses: Priority Health Services & Systems Issues [Call for research] [ Funded projects] 
• Scoping Reviews and Research Syntheses [Call for research] [ Funded projects] 
• Toward Canadian Benchmarks for Health Services Wait Times - Evidence, Application and Research Priorities [Call for research] [ Funded projects] 
• Research Syntheses  [Call for research] [ Funded projects] 

The RFA, “Strategic Training Modules: Building Capacity to Conduct Research Synthesis Regarding Health Services and Policy Research,” designed to support training initiatives designed to educate health services and policy research in methods of conducting syntheses, was launched in December 2005.

Other organizations that fund research syntheses include the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, the NHS Service Delivery and Organisation R&D Programme and Health Canada.

More information on conceptualizing and combining evidence for health system guidance can be found on the CHSRF website.