CIHR Knowledge Translation Casebook Project Summaries

Canadian Neonatal Network

The Canadian Neonatal Network (CNN) has dramatically improved the quality of health care for newborn babies in Canada. Their formula for success is now being spread around the world. By conducting multidisciplinary research and linking researchers administrators and health care practitioners, the CNN has helped all 30 tertiary neonatal intensive care units and 16 universities across Canada give Canada's premature babies the best possible chance at a healthy life. A national electronic database captures information about NICU admissions in Canada, while information from an annual audit report monitors outcomes, practices and trends. The results are fed back to individual institutions and regional health authorities. Proof this approach is working - one institution has reduced its incidence of infections by half, while its findings regarding the impact of premature birth on retinopathy will halve the number of infants routinely screened and reduce costs by more than $1 million each year. What's next? CNN has established the International Neonatal Collaboration to facilitate international research partnerships with countries including India, China, Singapore, Mexico and Australia.

Reducing Workplace Injury and Illness

Hundreds of thousands of employees are involved in industrial accidents each year, the costs of these accidents and workplace illnesses are estimated at more than $10 billion in Canada. In an effort to reduce these human and financial costs, the Eastern Canada Consortium on Workplace Health and Safety is taking lessons learned in Quebec, a province with a strong tradition of university-government-workplace collaboration, and translating them into improvements in Newfoundland, a province in need of capacity building in Workplace health and safety. In one successful example, the Newfoundland and Labrador Construction Safety Association developed links to a similar agency in Quebec and is implementing practices and products that have already proven successful. This project will continue to improve workplace safety in Atlantic Canada, as the researchers capture the lessons learned and pass them on through documents called "learning history."

Mapping Early Childhood Development

BC's teachers know that as many as 25% of children arrive on the first day of school challenged in fundamental aspects of cognitive, language, social, physical and emotional development. Now, researchers are helping to shape community action plans for addressing these problems early, and making sure that programs and resources effectively match children's needs. Since 2000, the Human Early Learning Partnership has conducted province-wide assessments of kindergarten children in BC to determine the needs of children and their families. The result is evidence-based programs that better reflect the communities they serve, including: new parenting programs and resource centres; hearing, sight and dental screening programs; full-day kindergartens; special programs for aboriginal preschoolers; and much more.

Helping Canadians Face Disasters

The tsunami of December 2004 not only affected countries around the Indian Ocean, it also had a devastating impact on the family and friends of victims living around the world, many of whom are right here in Canada. The fact that nearly 12% of Toronto's Tamil population was already suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, due to displacement and trauma during their native country's twenty-year civil war, made them a particularly vulnerable community. In the face of this crisis, a group of concerned scientists, physicians and community leaders formed the Local Distress Relief Network (LDRN) to provide information, referral and care to one the community. Luckily, the Tamil community had reached out to the research community long before the tsunami hit, which meant LDRN had early access to key information that helped them serve this community in crisis. This group succeeded in providing culturally appropriate health care that addressed the needs of a large minority Canadian community. The lessons learned: establishing community networks are key and the time to do it is now, before a crisis.